Memories a piece of paper Brought Back
“Some like golden ships
Some like silver ships
I like one ship…
That is friendship.”
Does not sound familiar? You must have written these words in greetings cards on different occasions when you were say 7 or 8 years old. Definitely not after that ! These words must have found a prominent place in the cards you made for your best friend. And that’s how I got these words too. When I was in the std II my friend wrote these words in the New Year Card she made for me. It was the first time I was introduced to this ‘friendly jingle’ and I was full of awe for my friend whom I believed to be a great poet (I was so naïve…). But then I realized that my friend was no great poet because the same day my sister received those words on a card her friend made for her. And so my sister and I began using the rhyme profusely in whatever we wrote. Not anymore. In fact we stopped using it the moment we got the next one! It went like this:
“I don’t like Sunday,
I don’t like Monday,
I like one day,
That is your birthday!”
And that became a regular in every birthday card I made for my friends. But with time these cute little poems got tarnished (due to overuse of course) and I stopped using them. I even stopped making cards “Why should I make one anyway?” was what I thought. Especially when Archie’s or Hall-mark cards were available. So I switched to tailor made cards perfect for any occasion. So did my friends. No more did we have to write the same old symphony (or cacophony?) of ‘I love your birthday’ on cards made out of middle pages torn out from a notebook. By the time I was ten I had stopped this business of making cards for my friends. And each one of us would look forward to New Year and Christmas to buy beautiful cards for each other. My favorite was the one with the baby Jesus in mother Mary’s arms, in a stable with the lambs and three shepherds standing nearby and cute cherubs floating above.
And I would buy something like that for my friend hoping that I would also receive a similar one from her! And we used to be in such a frenzied state buying cards for uncles, aunts, and teachers…
It used to be much fun. Being on the receiving end gave greater pleasure (it’s the same even now) and the joy used to be greater when a card arrived by post, especially if it was addressed to me instead of my father. It made me feel important and I could proudly say,”It’s mine!”
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