You hear people talking about being a card-carrying whatever. As I see it, this can mean two things. We subscribe to some things wholeheartedly, and some of our attachments find documentation in cards we carry.
So, you're a card carrying what? Open your wallet, purse, convictions - rattle them off. Can you come up with 10? I'd like to hear about it.
For my part, I'm a card-carrying (in no order of priority):
1) Coffee drinker - They're punch cards, actually. Jane and I go through a pound a week at home, and I also take coffee to work so I don't have to drink that cigarette broth the company offers for free. I keep an email distribution list for certain coworkers entitled "coffee snobs."
2) The Ouray Hot Springs Pool - even though we spend only a couple weeks a year visiting my mom in my home town - we're members all year long. I believe in supporting parks and other public works.
3) The Hill Business Library - when I first started my job as a researcher, someone asked me what the percentage growth of the GNP has been since 1967. Eek. I ran to the business reference library and they saved me. I've been a member ever since.
4) The North Star Historical Bottle Association - I've dug for old bottles since I was a kid. It's an obsession.
5) Details Hair Salon - (that's my inner 23-year-old you hear screaming "you sell-out weenie _____"). Yes, I pay real money to get my hair cut. I got tired of coming out of a "barber shop" looking like a hastily shorn sheep.
6) Health Insurance - Before moving to Minnesota, I had no idea what health insurance was. If I got sick I went to bed. If I got really sick, well I never did so I was lucky. Some of my co-workers complain about the health coverage, but I think it's amazing they'll buy my wife a power wheelchair every 5 years. I'm also amazed my employer - and my state government - cares whether I live or die. Not every workplace or civic environment is like that.
7) Public Radio and Public TV - The day public TV showed up in my remote mountain home town I was astonished. Several years later I raised the money to bring in pubic radio. Now the high school kids have started their own station. I've since dedicated my career to the concept of public media.
8) Outsider - no card. I am sooooo suspicious of any organization that offers me an inside track. Privilege feels dirty to me. To the extent I enjoy it - and it is *so* seductive and enjoyable - it makes me think all the more about ways I can pay back or pass it on.
9) Musician - card is a spare guitar pick. Thank you mom for making me sing in the talent show. Scared me to death, and I've gone looking for that terror ever since.
10) Hippie - I bought the package, and I paid the dues, but I don't attend meetings any more. Now, my inner 23-year-old . . .
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Comments: 43
1) I'm a card carrying AMA member X 2. I belong to the American Marketing Association and the American Motorcyclist Association. I got kicked out of medical school, so I can't have three.
2) Frequent traveler: I have so many, I have no idea what points I have where. I just throw the statements in the trash. The LAST thing I want to do with my free time is get on an airplane...
3) Public library: Good one. I like my Border's card too. I may go broke buying books. It's a mild form of insanity, but I have to own them.
4) Registered Democrat: And I vote.
5) Health Insurance. Try paying for COBRA for a while and you'll appreciate your overpriced, underfunded health insurance, no matter what the flavor. Try going without any and see how much you like health insurance.
6) Gather: If Gather had a card, I'd carry it. In fact, I folded a stickie over and wrote "Gather" on it. It's a pale pink, and quite snazzy.
I'm not a registered anything, but I'll never vote Republican ever again. I did only once - John Anderson.
Gather! Oh I need to fashion one of those, or maybe have business cards printed up saying Gatherholic . . .
I actually have many cards for BSA ackowledging all the training sessions I have completed.
I have a business card that lists BSA, youth sports and muscian that I give out where appropriate. So I guess I'm a card carrying member of the Wm. H. club.
WM, that's what I envisioned with a business card, having all the things on there that people need to know about me. Yeah, the Ron Hall club.
Erik, I'm a Democrat by default. I used to know how to fix my car, now I deserve a scheduled maintenance punch card (it's the least they can do). In all fairness, I put the maintenance in their hands and the car never breaks down. That's gotta be worth a few bucks. Netflix. Netflix is great.
2. Voter - Declared Democrat
3. Border's Books
4. Barnes & Noble
5. Sarasota County Public Libraries
6. Sarasota Community Blood Bank, O pos.
7. Office Depot Star Teacher
8. Big Olaf's Ice Cream (two more punches and I get a free scoop)
9. AARP (almost cried when I was invited last year)
10.Sarasota Film Society
Cheryl, you're brave. I'm afraid someone coming after me with a needle might as well be wielding a hunting knife! My wife contributes for the both of us and gives me a hard time about being a wimp. Readers, readers, readers. I know where you guys are spending your Gather Points. I like the idea that just one more AARP person might make the Republicans think their social security plans will be their undoing. I don't mean to dis Republicans, but it seems to be a common thread here.
Let's see, there's my public library card. Do the dozens of scaps of paper that have the bits and pieces of my life written on them count ?
I want a membership to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I plan to do that soon.
I am a card carrying member of:
1. St. Louis Public Library, Barnes and Noble and Borders
2. True Value Rewards...I prefer smaller hardware stores to the big boxes, and we get a lot of stuff from our local True Value. The guys at our local store actually know how to do stuff, and will occasionally give you an extra key for free...or spline a screen and only charge you for the materials; plus, they know where everything in the store is located.
3. Democrat...My voter registration card is always in my wallet.
4. GHP...It IS good having health care.
5. Costco.....love their stores. They pay their people a living wage, the CEO does not take a huge bonus every year.(makes only $500,000 a year as a salary because he believes he should not make over a certain amount more than his highest paid employee.) and they have a lot of cool stuff.
6. Walgreens....I work there...Have to carry my employee id to get discounts at other stores.
7. Target, Old Navy and Kohl's...credit cards, We've got 7 kids, it's good to have a few cards for emergencies, like when a kid decideds to grow 4 inches in 3 months.
8. Blockbuster.....entertainment for the kids when I have to work nights.
9. Phi Theta Kappa....Community College Honors Society.
10. St. Louis Zoo, St. Louis Science Center and Missouri Botanical Garden...( I think the last may need to be renewed.)
Becky, I get the feeling here people who read tend to vote Democratic. I too like stores where you walk in the door and someone asks if they can help you (someone who can help you that is - some stores have a fool up front asking the question but utterly incapable of following through).
Liz, I'm really in a tight spot. In the city the birds poop on the balcony below, and when they sort out the pecking order they wake the neighbor from her nap. When we go back to Colorado it's no better; you can't put out bird seed without attracting bears.
I want my birds damn it =:[
And I tried the phone number thing at Safeway once, but had set it up on an old number from 2 houses ago and my brain was frozen. Do you know they wouldn't use a courtesy card and no one in line offered me theirs. I always offer mine to the person in front of me if they don't have one! In fact, ask my almost 8yr-old son (who was 5 or 6 then) about why mommy left all her groceries sitting there and walked out of Safeway and won't go back there!
And BTW....Albertsons - which was the last holdout to go to those preferred customer cards - is now being sold! ) :
I just re-checked my wallet for ones I didn't mention. They are:
1) Credit card sized emergency saw, knife, bottle opener thingy. That's my survival card.
2) Car insurance.
3) Electronic access cards to the building I work in, the company I work for, and the parking ramp for my residence.
4) Cash floating device. It's a "credit card", but if I never pay them any interest, it's hard to justify calling it that.
5) Various denominations of what my friend Dan called "fun coupons".
1) Blockbuster card - love my movies.
2) Hamilton Public Library - love books even more!
3) VISA card - very important
4) Shopper's Drug Mart Optimum points card
5) Zellers and the Bay Rewards card
6) Ontario Health card
7) SIN card
8) Card for Regional Palliative Care Volunteer Program
9) Membership card for Hamilton Paranormal group (love this one!)
10) A stack of Canadian Tire money. (Guess that doesn't really count)
I don't even carry a wallet....
"just the facts"
drivers license
fishing license
what else does one guy need.....
And it's amazing what you can tell about people by seeing their card list. Wow - RON - this idea rules!!!
Noting how many people here are democrats AND carry a AAA card, I thought I might throw in my little theory about the origins of right vs. left political leanings. Recently, a friend and I were talking, and she mentioned that she was a conservative while her boss was a liberal, and liberals "expected to have things done for them." "Really?" I said, "You're a conservative? But how can that be? You're so open-minded!" So there you have it, the preconceptions, or caricatures if you will, of what makes a person a liberal or a conservative.
My own theory is that we're all somewhere on a continuum from ultra-liberal to ultra-conservative, with most of us falling somewhere in between. In my little theory, conservatism evolves from the need to conserve in order to survive, i.e., going back a few generations, we'd be talking about someone who is working his fingers to the bone hacking out a living from the soil. Someone who has no time for books but conserves everything he produces in order to survive. On the other hand, an ultra-lilberal might evolve in a rarefied scholastic atmosphere where ideas are debated from morning to night and profound thoughts hold sway - while dinner is served. All of this probably reveals me as the card-carrying moderate I really am - someone who tries to hold the two in balance, so that artistic thought and ideas spring out of a practical knowledge of how things work and the understanding of how to take care of the physical needs of living on the earth.
But your auto mechanics? Unless you live in Ithaca, they're probably Republicans - but hey, I could be wrong. Before you all start throwing eggs, let me say in my own defense that I'm from Somerset County, Pennsylvania (where Flight 93 went down, where they rescued the trapped coal miners). They're mostly Republicans there, and by golly they know how to get things done. Somehow I just don't hang out there that much anymore.
Okay, I will now duck while I get attacked from both sides.
Over and out!
By the way, KPIG rocks, but I don't carry a lard card either.
KPIG - that keeps coming up . . .