Happy Mother's Day; We're Watching You

listen:

I received a really beautiful Mother's Day card last week. It has one of those pictures on the front that makes you smile -- in this case, an infant wearing a huge grin smeared with baby food.

Inside were a few words about the history of Mother's Day and a wish for me to have a great day.

There was just one small problem with the card.

I am not a mother.

I do have a cat, but my relationship with Molly is more like that of a sister.

She doesn't respect my authority enough to look at me maternally.

I guess I can understand the error, though, considering that the card wasn't from a close friend or relative.

It came from my neighborhood grocery store.

I was, as you can imagine, a little perplexed.

Does the store send Mother's Day cards to every person in America? To every female in America? To everybody who has ever shopped there? But how do they even know I shop there?

I checked with some friends. The people I talked to -- even those who actually have children -- received no greeting card.

Then I remembered: I received the card from one of those stores that makes you show a card in order to qualify for discounted prices.

Obviously, this company took a look at all the information it has collected about my shopping habits, and it was decided that I needed a Mother's Day card.

Now, I have a confession to make. I never liked the idea of some company collecting my personal shopping information.

I had horrible visions of some guy in a gray flannel suit sitting in a cubicle, reviewing his copy of my receipt, and shouting, "What kind of a lunatic buys one-percent milk and Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream at the same time?"

But I also was not crazy about the idea of missing out on price discounts. So I filled out the application, got me a card, and then I did a very naughty thing.

I gave the extra copy of my card to a friend.
My friend, you see, is also not a fan of corporations sticking-their-noses-where-they-don't -belong,

We both thought we were performing a sort of freaky anti-civic duty by sharing a card and thereby skewing the information that was being collected.

So every time I go to the store I end up, for example, with a handful of coffee coupons with my receipt. I don't drink coffee, but the company knows my friend does.

Innocent enough. Right?

Then I received the Mother's Day card.
Now here's the the funny thing: my friend doesn't have children either.

But what she and her husband do have are finicky dogs, and one of those dogs, Rocky, has to take medication from time to time. But Rocky isn't fond of medication. Unless he receives it in a spoonful of baby food.

So this is how I figure it has happened.

The Grocery Police were watching the grocery purchases recorded on my discount card and noted a sudden trend, just in the last year or so, of baby food purchases.

So the company, uniquely mixing up a blend of Big Brother Creepiness with a dose of good-old-American holiday manipulation, sent me a Mother's Day card.

Perhaps inside the card should have said:
"Happy Mother's Day! We're Watching You!"