Published: January 19, 2008 07:42 pm         

The birthday card from (wherever)

The shock of it lifted you out of your seat, rattled the windows, and could be heard all the way to the house next door.

You really wouldn’t think that a simple little greeting card, under $6 as I remember, would cause such a fuss.

I have a very dear sister-in-law, with whom I exchange birthday cards each year. This year, I chose one that said sweetly, For my Sister, and struck me funny, a bold brassy music card, the kind that, when you open it, it plays a song electronically. Like almost all modern caterwauling that is called music these days, the chosen song was a raucous number I could not identify — but that’s pretty much par for the course.

I remember there were lots of brass, percussion, and noise, both the musical kind and the emotional kind, and totally indecipherable words, for which I was later grateful. It was the kind of noise that, when you opened the card, the shock of it lifted you out of your seat, rattled the windows, and could be heard all the way to the house next door. Which was what made it funny, of course — it was so different from the usual, often sentimental, cards I had sent in the past.

You know the kind: To the best sister in the world, Why I love my sister, What’s a sister? That last category of cards drives me around the bend, by the way, the What’s a (name your relative) cards. Not only are they usually sickly sentimental, they must surely give the birthday girl or boy the idea that either the sender is an idiot, or else thinks the recipient is one. What? You don’t know what a sister, or an uncle, or a mother is? Well, here, let the great me enlighten you.

Anyway.

I grinned when I bought it, and I grinned when I took it out of the bag at home. I immediately stopped grinning, however, because with no provocation whatsoever, no ceremonial opening of the card, no expectation of upheaval, right there in my hands, the darned thing started to play! That is, to roar!

Frantically, I stuffed it into the envelope. It kept on playing. I hit it. No luck. I dropped it. Still played on. (Screamed on is more like it.) I stepped on it, lightly No good at all. Finally, desperately, I picked it up and bent it into right angle. It gave out a few hiccups and shut up, almost gratefully, it seemed to me.

From then on it was like a very bad joke, endlessly repeated. I couldn’t wait to mail it the next day and get it out of the house, because at odd moments, whenever the air stirred, it seemed, it would turn on and yell until I bent it in a different direction. I was just glad Lexi wasn’t around any more — it would have driven her under the bed. I almost ended there myself, but I didn’t fit. (The really scary thing about all this, as I look back, is that I had no misgivings at all about inflicting this monster upon my dear relatives.)

It was torture writing it and, in the car on the way to the post office, it went off twice. Perhaps it had a personal grudge against me, because I listened carefully when I mailed it, and there was no spectral voice screaming out of the mail box. Still, I’m certain that, all the way to Minnesota, it left behind a trail of pale and stricken post office employees.

I think my sister-in-law and her husband probably couldn’t outshout the thing when they got it, because they didn’t call until it had, I believe, just about worn itself out. When they did call, bless their hearts, they appeared to be shaking with laughter. Or at least, I think that’s what they were shaking with. Well, whatever it was, it wasn’t terminal.

And the first thing they mentioned was not the implacable will of the Recording That Just Wouldn’t Stop. No, what they said, first thing off, was, “Did you know what the words said?”

“Words?” I said grumpily. “Were there words? All I could hear was noise and shouting. Hope you liked it.”

“Oh, thanks so much,” said my sister-in-law. “Linda” (their oldest daughter) “recognized the song and looked up the words for me.”

And here are some of the words to the song I sent my sister-in-law, from the song “Lady Marmelade” sung by Patti Labelle:

Hey sister, go sister, soul sister, go sister

Hey sister, go sister, soul sister, go sister.

So far so good, right? Then it goes on

He met Marmelade down in old New Orleans

Struttin’ her stuff on the street.

She said, “ey, ‘ello, hey, Joe

You wanna give it a go? mm, mm?

Can’t say as I’m familiar with this song. I don’t think we’ve done it in Cumberland Choral Society. It ends up quite multiculturally in French.

Creole Lady Marmelade Voulez vous coucher avec moi*, se soir. Voulez vous coucher avec moi.

(*Will you sleep with me tonight?)

Thank goodness, my sister- and brother-in-law both have great senses of humor.

Maude McDaniel is a Cumberland freelance writer. Her column appears on Sundays in the Times-News.