A library due-date slip is stamped by machine. A car's oil-change sticker is written by hand, in grease pencil, by whoever last touched the vehicle. The six-month reminder card splits the difference: preprinted on one side with the practice's name and a cartoon tooth or two, filled in by hand on the other with a date a member of the front desk writes before the patient has finished putting on their coat. We examined a sample of forty-one such cards, drawn from offices across three states, and find the format essentially unchanged since the 1960s: card stock roughly the size and weight of a standard index card, a date line, and, in most specimens, a small illustration intended to be endearing rather than accurate. Nine of the forty-one carried a magnet on the back, a later innovation meant to secure the card to a refrigerator rather than a wallet, on the theory that a refrigerator door is checked more often than a purse.
For the record: we are divided on whether the card still functions as intended. Two members hold that its entire value now lies in the automated text message that follows five months later, the card itself a formality kept out of tradition rather than necessity. One member disagrees strenuously, citing a childhood refrigerator that held nothing else for a decade but two of these cards, crossed out and replaced, crossed out and replaced. The vote was three to one, with one abstention on the grounds that the abstaining member had misplaced their own card and could not, in good conscience, rule on its efficacy.