Get well cards have become so humorous that if you don’t get sick you’re missing half the fun.

Flip Wilson’s joke turns a commonplace social ritual—the “get well” card—into a comment on how entertainment and consumer culture can reframe even misfortune as a kind of occasion. The humor depends on inversion: illness is normally something to avoid, yet the cards’ escalating jokiness makes sickness sound like the price of admission to a shared comic experience. Implicitly, the line also pokes fun at the way sentiment can become formulaic and commodified; the card, not the person’s recovery, becomes the center of attention. As with much of Wilson’s stand-up, the quip uses everyday observation to expose a slightly absurd truth about modern manners.