We Have Gone Crazy Over Cards

America has gone card crazy. There is a card for every occasion to physically stretch our wallets to the max. According to a recent "Men's Health" magazine article, men's wallets are busting out at an unbelievable rate, making this phenomenon the fashion faux pas of the year. The piece said, "All you need in the wallet are your credit cards and greenbacks. Also, you should clean out your wallet once a month." I suppose that last bit of advice is given because many men have an unsightly bulge protruding from their pants pockets which is equivalent to the comb-over hairstyle for balding men.

I agree with "Men's Health", so my resolution is to keep my wallet thin. I will commit to carrying 1 credit card, 1 video rental card and my driver's license. All non-essential, non-monetary items will have to be displaced. Sorry nephew Adam, your soccer picture will have to be scanned and put on my PDA (personal digital assistant).

Photos and everything else will have to go and that includes those ridiculous frequent user cards. Every business in the world seems to have these cards, which measures your loyalty to the shoe, hardware, drug store and restaurant. "Buy 10, Get 1 Free!" screams the card for the local bagel and coffee shop. OK, so I followed what the card instructed me and I bought 10 sets of a dozen bagels so that I could receive my 11th free of charge with two tubs of cream cheese. It took me three years. When I finally went to the bagel establishment to redeem my free set of bagels with cream cheese, the frequent card looked older than the employee who I presented it to.

"I'm not sure if we can do this," the bagel shop clerk nervously informed me. "Let me check with the manager."

As the clerk approached the manager with the tattered card, I had visions of ransacking the entire cache of bagels for all of my hard work.

The clerk came back and said, "OK, so you want a dozen bagels with two free tubs of cream cheese."

Like Steve Martin's character in the "Plains, Trains and Automobiles" scene where he has had it with the milquetoast airline clerk, I said in a measured tone, "I want a dozen bagels and two tubs of cream cheese completely free. The entire enchilada."

The clerk quickly obliged.

Why did it take me three years to redeem my bagels? That's because I was working on two different sets of frequent cards from that bagel shop's competitors.

What also bothers me about many of these frequent cards is that they keep track of your purchasing patterns. While I'm not a big government conspiracy theorist that my privacy is being invaded, I have a problem with the local drug store knowing that I indulge in gummy bears.

Which brings me back to my original point. This country has gone card crazy and so have we. Are we really saving money by using them? Of course not! The right card for the right store and on the right date is never in our wallets when we need them. Most of the time when we think of using the loyalty card, it is when we are in our running automobiles, so while we are wasting gas, we are fumbling around for the right card. Some geniuses have come up with a way to solve this problem. They have created a key-like replica of the frequent card to go on your key ring. That's great if your name is Marge who drives a minivan and lugs around her three children; it is not great if your name is Mac and tool around in a pickup truck full of roofing material. The frequent card key ring replica is not the most masculine item in the world. Perhaps Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton can woo more Southern Joe Six Packs if she proposed outlawing this key ring attachment.

As we waste gas looking for the right card, my conclusion is that frequent cards are a scam designed by retailers and the oil industry. Forget about finding those WMDs. Let's find the weasels that have disrupted our lives with these nightmares that come in plastic or cardboard! In this New Year, let's all make a resolution to simplify our lives by burning our frequent discount cards.