It’s Valentine’s Day AGAIN? I did not like this day in the 50’s when my little hands stuffed valentines in handmade sacks on small school desks. That, by the way, was in the day when the desks bolted to the floor and joined together like portions of a railway train. The front of your desk was the back of the one in front and your seat folded up. Usually someone had carved initials in the top and there was the ever present, but no longer used inkwell hole at the upper right.
We didn’t use inkwells; our pens – when we graduated from the pencils that were really big, about the size of an adult finger – had a lever on the side that allowed you to suck ink up from a bottle. I remember my grandmother gave me a beautiful ladies pen in ivory and gold.
I had terrible penmanship, and still do, for that matter. And I still don’t like Valentine’s Day. I truly do not see the sense in it. I don’t know what the Valentine’s Day equivalent of the Grinch is, but I’m an acolyte.
I guess I’m an Alice.
*
* I can dish it out, but I can’t take it. Must work on that, along with Fist of Death.
Every year my husband gives me a romantic Valentine’s card and I … either forget or get him a joke card.
I have never liked Valentine’s Day. Not since 5th grade. Before then I really don’t have a memory of it other than my mother would help me make my Valentines for the school party every year. I’d take a round paper doily and glue a red construction paper heart to it Then write some sappy saying on it and tape a piece of Trident gum or a lollypop to it. My mother had a rule that you gave a card to everyone in your class and then if you wanted to give one to people outside your classroom you could but you always gave one to the folks in your classroom. 5th grade I did just that and I remember the party we had, of course we had those silly paper sacks we had decorated and we were all looking at the cards we’d gotten. The girls oohing and aahing over who got the “special” card from that one boy…. I don’t remember thinking anything odd about the cards I had gotten and most people always reacted well to the fact that they got a piece of candy or gum with mine. But there was “the girl”, you know the one. The popular girl that everyone revolved around. I had given her a card, of course, she was in my classroom… and I’ll never forget… she very loudly announced, “oh look, I got one from HER” and then turned and told me “If I’d known you were going to give one to me I’d have given one to you.” Her entourage all giggled and whispered. Up to that point I really hadn’t noticed she hadn’t sent one to me but thanks to her very loud exclamation the entire class now knew that I didn’t get a card from “the girl.” She loved humiliating people.
The next year I admit I was spiteful, I made a card for everyone as my mother required and on my way to school to put them in the decorated sacks I tore hers up and chewed the gum myself.
Love it.