The early form of public love
While listening to sons #1 and #2 explaining how they had tricked a naive classmate with a fake Valentine note (the usual drill; pretending it was from a secret admirer and then busily snickering over the unreasonable hope level they’d created), I remembered how it was in “the good old days”. Best days of my youth, etc.
You see, this was not a day for star-crossed lovers when I was in my single-digit years. Rather, the whole week before had a socialization aspect that my own children have never known. This was the only day of the year when we had to treat all of our classmates as equals. No ostracization, no hero worship. Equality for all. In fact, if the UN had been “more on the ball” it would have been presented as a corollary of world peace. I guess the Saint thing didn’t carry well in other cultures.
We spent the week prior to this date with a pair of scissors. Every skill that children usually learn in kindergarten (we didn’t have such a thing) was practiced in the home, at the table. Cutting along the lines. Glue applied carefully to the proper tabs so that carefully assembled envelopes would hold carefully detached cards that had the corner on the red ink market. In passing, it’s odd that the business world uses red ink as a symbol for financial loss, because certain printing firms made their fortunes supplying books of these cards to every child in the kingdom.
We did have to make certain edited decisions, if the cards were varied enough. Size was a sort parameter, and so was the mushy factor of any printed text. We tried to match the card to the person, even though we couldn’t be insulting. If there was a card labeled for teacher, it was set aside. If there were two, you retired the ugly one from the pile. Teacher was top.
I can remember sitting at the table making a list of all my classmates, and I can remember lettering each name and I can remember depositing the whole batch in a box in front of the room for distribution later in the day, and I can remember taking them all home. After that point, nada. The value was in the preparation, not the reception. I never witnessed anyone collecting them for their future value. We also used to get a bit of candy, but Lent sometimes interfered, so it wasn’t in the same “can’t wait” category as Easter.
I should call one of my sisters and see how she remembers the whole thing. It could be like the “call a friend” on the millionaire show.
