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Thank you thank you Date: Sent Tuesday, January 23, 2007 Category: None

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Copyright 2003 W. Bruce Cameron
Please do not remove the copyright from this essay.

My resume brags that I am a "regular contributor to Time Magazine," which is true: I regularly contribute about 30 bucks a year to their subscription department.

I've also written for the magazine a few times, and am perhaps best known for an unfortunate column I wrote concerning thank-you notes. In it, I described the disappointment I felt when I purchased a gift for a nephew of mine and didn't receive an acknowledgement of any kind; I then went on to sternly lecture parents on the proper etiquette for responding to presents. To make the essay applicable for people who did not have the same nephew, I identified him merely as "a boy I know."

I should have remembered that parents are grateful for uncompromising advice on childrearing so long as it doesn't have to do with their own kid.

"Hey," an angry father accosted me on the telephone, "I don't appreciate you writing this thing about my son!"

"Do I know you?" I replied.

"All I got to say is, I'm glad you didn't send a gift, because if you had, we never would have sent you a thank-you note because you wrote this article about it," he fumed.

"Can you give me a moment to sort of think through that last sentence?" I pleaded.

"My son's crying, no thanks to you, Mr. Thank You Jerk!"

I also heard from my nephew's father: "Maybe you would get a thank-you note if you sent him something besides a sock puppet," he fumed.

"It's the thought that counts," I answered in a patient, "I'm the Expert in Time Magazine So Shut Up" tone.

"What thought? Every year for nineteen years you draw a face on one of your old socks and send it to him and he's supposed to be grateful?" he demanded.

"I'm shocked you think I'm using an old sock. Most of them I hardly wore," I objected.

But the worst reaction came from relatives who read my Time column and concluded it meant that I personally would start sending thank-you notes.

"Did you get my gift?" my sister wanted to know. "It should have been there by now."

"Yes, thanks."

"Because I haven't gotten a note from you yet. I'm really concerned."

"Didn't we talk about this yesterday?" I asked.

"Yes, but there's still no note," she advised. "I know what a stickler you are on the topic."

"Well, I got the gift."

"Okay, I'll call you tomorrow if your note isn't here yet!" she promised, ringing off.

Faced with the threat of talking to my family every day, I grimly sat down and wrote notes acknowledging all the presents I had received. "Dear Mom," I wrote, "Thank you for the sweater and for the socks. You can stop sending socks because I'm running out of things to do with them. Love, Bruce."

My mother, thrilled to support me in my quest to make America more polite, wrote back promptly. "Dear Son, thank you for the thank-you note. Glad you liked the sweater. Love, Mom."

Well, now what? Do you have to thank someone for a thank-you note? Well, if I didn't, she'd be calling me wanting to know where her acknowledgement was. I wrote, "Mom, thanks for the response. No need to write back. Bruce."

"Dear Son," she responded promptly, "thanks for your note telling me I didn't need to write back. Love, Mom."

"Dear Mom, okay stop. Thanks, Bruce."

"Dear Bruce, got your note, thanks very much. Love, Mom."

"Dear Mom, while I appreciate getting your last note, I truly think you've thanked me enough. So thanks, and let this be the last time we mention the matter."

"Dear Bruce, thank you so much for your graciousness in your last note," she gushed back.

"Dear Mom, I am sending back the sweater and the socks. Sorry that one of the socks has a face drawn on it."

"Dear Bruce, thank you for sending back the sweater and the socks."

"Dear Time Magazine: A few years ago I wrote an article about how people should always write thank-you notes. Please print a retraction of that article."

Dear Mr. Cameron: Thank you very much for writing Time Magazine....."

Received from W. Bruce Cameron.