I had an uncle once who, each time he visited would say upon leaving, “So long now. I’ll see y’all in the funny papers.” I thought it was so funny when I was a child, but as far as I knew I was never in the funny papers, or if I was I didn’t recognize myself because I’m sure I did look. So this week, I can report that Hubby and I have finally seen ourselves in the funny papers. 

We’d gotten behind on preparing our Christmas cards for the mail, so I forced myself to sit down and address all the envelopes on the computer with Word. (Arthritis has given me lousy penmanship lately.) I noted the fairly short stack of cards left over from last year and figured there’d be just enough if I trimmed the names of those old friends and acquaintances we hadn’t seen for many, many moons and hadn’t had a card from for just as many from the lengthy list. 

Without too many complications other than a printer that kept trying to snag and tear the edges of the envelopes, having to re-set the option buttons to 2.6 inches from the top and 2.5 inches from the left side for printing every envelope I addressed, plus feeling very disatisfied with the quality of the color print, I nevertheless adjusted my attitude and finished all the envelopes and matched each one with a card to fit. Then I scanned the list one last time only to find–one more name remained on the list. Dang! I was all out of cards and envelopes.

It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the kitchen needed cleaning from a hurried lunch, and supper was still unplanned. We still needed to drive to post office to make sure the cards made out it time. “Maybe we could just . . . you know . . . not send a card to this person?” I suggested. 

It happened to be the name of a woman Hubby had worked with as a volunteer for many years in Red Cross of Las Vegas, and though I knew her, she wasn’t a personal friend of mine, just his. So she could be trimmed, right? 

He was incredulous. “What? Don’t you remember, she sent us a coupon for a pound of See’s chocolates last year! We can’t not send her a card.”

Actually, she’d given us a box of candy every year for as long as I could remember. Yummy chocolates. Chocolate-covered marzipan, my favorite, chocolate covered marshmallows, caramel fudge nuggets, pecan turtles. He was right. Nothing to do but drop the cards we’d completed off at the post office, and stop at a store to buy more cards.

There was a T.J. Maxx near the post office so we went there, and–noting the enormous number of cards available at discounted prices–I decided what the heck, I’ll just buy next year’s cards now as well, so I’ll be all ready early next year. Okay, you probably know what happened next.

Tuesday, one more card arrived–from a name on the “don’t send” list. Wednesday, two more from the same list. And today there were several more. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? So here I am rushing to get more cards addressed and into tomorrow’s mail.

We hadn’t gotten around to reading the Sunday funnies until Monday night. Upon hearing Hubby laughing uproarously after the Pickles comic strip popped up, I asked him what was so funny. “This is so uncanny,” he said, then handed the paper over to me. This is what I saw.

Not quite our story, perhaps, but in the Pickles comic we definitely recognize ourselves. So now that we’ve seen ourselves in the funny paper, tell me, do you think anyone who gets my Christmas cards either Christmas Eve or late this year will suspect anything?