Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate

A direct-mail solicitation from Big Auto Insurance Co. arrived recently. I was poised to throw it away, unopened, when I noticed the following printed on the envelope under the red letters IMPORTANT:

"Do not deliver to the wrong addressee... Do not fold, spindle or mutilate..." followed by other, increasingly gag-line warnings (e.g., do not wear brown shoes with a navy suit), ending with an injunction against paying too much for car insurance.

Do not fold, spindle or mutilate? Wow, there's a copywriter who remembers punch cards. Or maybe a younger one who heard the phrase somewhere or other, and thought it funny even without a sense of context.

I spent the golden age of punch cards being a child, and so didn't interact with them much, but I am old enough to remember receiving phone bills (from the Phone Company) in the form of punch cards. That stopped sometime in the very early '80s. As far as I remember, Vanderbilt had quit using them by the time I was a student.

I don't think I ever had a spindle on any of my desks at any of my offices, either. With air conditioning in just about every office, the spindle was redundant, besides being more of a hazard than the equally obsolete but more decorative paperweight.

I'm not sure I have anything around here to properly spindle my junk mail from Big Auto Insurance, so I guess I'll have to fold and then mutilate it before throwing it away, unopened.