Just a few hundred more, and I can order a new box. Photo: Mitch Teich
Dec 04, 2022 —
The meeting at the radio station was breaking up, when I called after the person with whom I’d just met. “Hey,” I said sheepishly, “you already know how to find me, but let me give you my business card.” I expected, at best, that she’d indulge me, slip the card into a pocket, and then probably look to pitch it in the first trash can she encountered outside. Instead, she stopped in my doorway, took the card quite willingly, and there ensued a conversation among several of us in appreciation of the humble business card. And that pleased me, because quite simply, I have always loved business cards.
Lest you think I was a super-weird kid, let me assure you: I also collected baseball cards. Someplace in the future Mitch Teich Presidential Archives, I have a 1976 Milwaukee Brewers DH Henry Aaron card. I collected football, hockey, and basketball cards. I even once sent in a proof of purchase to the Wonder Bread people to receive my free “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” trading cards, including one of Richard Dreyfuss building a Devil’s Tower National Monument out of mashed potatoes.
But those collections pale in comparison to my lifetime of collecting business cards.
I spent most of my childhood in the Washington, DC, area, which was a pretty business card-intensive place. And my parents had many occasions to exchange business cards with people, after which they were only too happy to pass those cards along to me. I wasn’t picky: my business card collection included astronauts and insurance agents; lieutenant governors and motel proprietors. Business cards in French and Danish and Japanese. Somehow, in a time before eBay existed, I acquired cards from Nelson Rockefeller and Spiro Agnew. (Why? I have no idea.)
I had thousands of cards in organizers and shoe boxes before I got the ones that excited me most: my own business cards when I got my first full-time news job, which I disseminated, Johnny Appleseed-like, on story assignments and at conferences. I still have part of that box from 1992, along with part of a box from my next job, and the job after that. They’ll come in handy as bookmarks, if I ever decide to read 836 books at the same time.
Anyway, I was surprised that my meeting guest was as much a fan of business cards as I was, despite being younger and more tech savvy than I. Surely, she would support the idea of a Bluetooth business card scanner that would allow you to dispose of the cards themselves, while organizing the information to allow you to do a mail-merge from the comfort of your phone.
But no, she appreciated the physical cards. As do I, along with the act of exchanging them. Aside from giving you a lifetime supply of bookmarks or emergency dental floss, they plant a physical flag on a point of our existence. When it comes to a sense of self, the internet is both forever and ephemeral. But exchanging a physical, tangible business card with someone is a way of memorializing a real human interaction, however brief. It’s a snapshot of who we were, in 2-inch by 3-inch form, without having to cringe at our old hair style.
So even in this electronic age, I still keep the business cards people give me. Send me yours, and I’ll keep it, too. Although if you’re a history buff, feel free to make me an offer for the Spiro Agnew card.
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