(photo by Laura Elizabeth Pohl)

Digging through my wallet today I have discovered — I never really thought about it before — that I have many kinds of cards; too many, I think. Some are credit cards and thus a constant reminder of the monthly burden I’ve placed on myself.

Many are flimsy business cards, some you might even call calling cards, and there are a few gift cards to various computer stores and book stores. I have membership cards to the few societies I am a member of and insurance cards that are there, I suppose, to give me some sense of security regarding my health or the health of my car. I have several security cards instead of keys: one for the building I work in, and another for the suite that houses the cubicle within the building I work in, and most recently I have acquired a parking pass (yet one more card) that allows me access each morning to the parking garage a block from the building that houses the suite which houses the cubicle I work in, and for which I pay the sum of $100 per month for this very privilege.

My driver’s license is a card, as is my Social Security card. I even have a debit card that parades itself as a MasterCard, but in reality gives me no credit whatsoever, no matter how well I treat it. I have discount cards and privilege cards. I have rewards cards that allow me to collect points for purchases, food punch cards that allow me to collect punches for purchases, and ink-stamp cards that allow me to collect ink-stamps for purchases  — all of which I summarily forget to produce from my wallet whenever I find myself standing in front of a checkout clerk. I even have something called a “universal access card,” but I have no idea what it could possibly access — the universe, perhaps?

We are a society of cards and they’re filling our pockets and our wallets and our purses and our landfills and the very desk I write these words upon. We need cards to access this, or cards to purchase that, or cards to even prove we are who we say we are — apparently no one’s word is good any longer. We have playing cards of all sorts, and packs of cards with pictures of sportsmen and heroes, of villains and heroines, all with a stick of hard, pink bubblegum.

We have catalogs of cards to find our way through the mazes of shelves and stacks in the public libraries. We have index cards for jotting down notes lest we forget our speeches or our thoughts or our recipes or how to make the perfect dry martini.

We send out a card to thank someone for a birthday gift that, no doubt, was itself a card for us to purchase ourselves the gift that someone hadn’t the insight or the time or the inkling of understanding to purchase for us.

How simple it is to walk into the video store and ask, “Please may I purchase a gift card?”

“Why certainly … how much would you like to spend?”

And then you wonder … what is this friend worth? $20, $50, $14.72? You don’t even know, so you say, “How about 20 bucks,” and then you get, “They only come in denominations of $5, $10, $25 and $50.”

So you wonder and you ponder and you consider and you contemplate and in the end you buy the $25 card because that sounds fair enough, and then you’re asked if you’d like to buy a discount card which would save you 10 percent on any purchase made today and so you ask the lady behind the counter, “Would I save 10 percent on the purchase of the gift card?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head, probably thinking to herself that you’re cheap. “Discount cards are no good towards the purchase of the gift cards.”

And, you think to yourself as you look around and spot the various sale items, posters, T-shirts, mugs, and other bits of movie paraphernalia that litter the store, they probably aren’t good for much else, either.

So out of embarrassment you buy the discount card anyway because you don’t think you’re cheap and you certainly don’t want her to think you’re cheap; the card costs you $25, but don’t worry, she tells you, you can make all that back in no time at all and save money, too … and of course you know full well, as you shake your head and smile to yourself (and as you attempt to stuff yet one more card into your bulging wallet), that you don’t watch movies let alone purchase them and you’ll probably never be back until the next friend’s birthday and it doesn’t matter anyway because the discount card that now occupies your wallet behind the sub-club card and your all American Big Bank Visa card is no good towards the purchase of the gift cards.

STORY INDEX

ARTICLES >

“America’s deepening credit card hole” by Jim Hightower
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=7979

“Calling all shoppers: On grocery store loyalty cards” by Deborah Pierce
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13684

“Charge now, think later” by Elizabeth Zipper
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12275

“Credit card companies close Muslim accounts” by Hillary Russ
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15659

“Letting consumerism get under your skin” by Jim Hightower
URL: http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18729

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Thomas J. Clancy