A Fold In Her New Reality

I work in an arts and craft store that does not sell cards. We do sell thick paper that you can make into cards yourself, though.

A day before Father’s Day, these papers are popular with people looking to make their own personalized cards. Everything is going smoothly until one woman enters the store. She clearly speaks English, is middle-aged, and was clearly not born yesterday, so this still perplexes me.

Customer: “Do you sell cards?”

Me: “Not really, but we do sell paper you can fold and make into your own card.”

Customer: “Can you show me?”

I bring her over to all the selections of paper.

Me: “So, if you just fold these in half, you get your own card you can personalize in any way.”

Customer: *Pause* “How do you fold a piece of paper in half?”

Me: “You… fold in it in half?”

I then demonstrated how to fold a paper in half, thinking maybe she didn’t know how to cleanly fold a paper to get a clean edge. But no… this woman is still confused and amazed that I could do this.

I had to show her again how to do this, and when I unfolded it, she just looked so lost and unsure how this card had then turned back into an A4 piece of paper.

Somehow, this woman had gone her entire life never folding any form of paper in half or realizing that a card, unfolded, is just a piece of paper.