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Valentine’s Day came and went.
I didn’t get nothing.
Again.
The Hallmark Card folks have excommunicated me!
I think that small, chubby guy with the wings and a bow and arrow is mad at me for my Valentine actions years ago in elementary school. And that wasn’t my fault. Miss Carolyn wouldn’t let us cut out the first president’s head until we had “hand delivered” to every person in class a Valentine Card.
Ye gads! I’m six years old. There were people in that room that I didn’t want them to “Be Mine” forever! I didn’t like girls and it was embarrassing to lay a card on Bob Edwards’ desk that declared “Love You Always.”
For both of us!
Plus, a package of fifty cards cost twenty-five cents at the Ben Franklin Store. Do you have any idea what an enterprising young boy could do with a whole quarter back in those days? That was a Coca-Cola WITH peanuts, two packs of baseball cards and twin Hostess Cupcakes, with the chocolate icing and white swivel across the top.
Talk about throwing money down the drain.
And we had to do it all over again the next year!
It undoubtedly was in the teacher’s union playbook. Miss Booth gave us a whole hour after the Blue Bird reading class to exchange cards. I can still feel the embarrassment to this day……
Yogi, of course, finally figured it out. By the third grade he was making his own cards. He cut out a bunch of small hearts from some of the red construction paper we had on hand for the presidents, wrote some enduring terms like “Eat Dirt”, “Party Pooper”, “Your Train Has Derailed”, etc. and passed them out like he was Cupid on steroids.
That cost us a week of recess.
My older brother, Leon, didn’t see this thing like I did. He gave a card, or two, to every girl in the whole school. He called it “covering all the bases.” It made no sense to me. Valentine’s and baseball didn’t have nothing in common.