I am always a sucker for homemade cards.

There’s something about the traditional Hallmark that is lost on me.

How could anyone get choked up knowing this same card with this rather generic, albeit, super-sappy and ah-isn’t-that-special, message is being handed out by the thousands to everyone celebrating a birthday around the same time?

Sure my Mom does an amazing job at choosing her cards and then highlights or writes things like, “So true” and “Yes!” with an arrow pointing at those parts of the message she has circled that best reflect our personalities.

Ellie had a birthday party on the weekend and wanted to open one of her cards on the way home.

She said, “Oh, my friend wrote a lot in this card.”

I’m listening.

She read, “Dear Ellie, I love you. You can do anything.”

Gulp.

Maybe it’s these sappy Olympic commercials or the personal journey vignettes about how the athletes all started by skating using their mother’s wooden spoons as skate-blades and their family lived in a van down by the river and now here they are on the podium. Her heart grew a thousand times that day.

I could barely keep the tears from streaming down my face as Ellie read this note from her eight year old friend about how Girls can do anything.

So true!

Then something about Ellie could be an artist and draw cartoons.

Yes!

It got so sappy, I called the girl’s mother to tell her that was the highlight of the birthday party for me and how meaningful her daughter’s card was.

The mother explained that the poem on the card was her daughter’s favourite from a card she once received.

Plagiarist.