Columnists
Who’s my ginger peach?
In a recent column (or two) I wrote about clearing out the old stuff and donating locally. I’m still at it. Of course, my front and upper hallways look a bit like an episode of Hoarders or one of those garages on Backroad Bounty. I might be weakening, because I truly hope the Clothesline folks don’t phone in the next few days. A call, with a promise to pick up, could seriously erode my resolve to get the bulk of this stuff to a local thrift shop. Amongst the stuff, I found a stash of cut-out valentines from my grade school days. On one, a cartoon couple is sharing a glass of pop at a lunch counter, imprinted with “Do you like Valentines? Soda I.” On the back, in pencil “To: Theresa From: Louise”. Louise being a gal I’ve known since I was about four years old. Weesey and I still correspond.
It’s February. It’s the month of love. When I was a kid, this would have been the week my mom brought home a slew of valentines from Woolworths. If you’re about my age, you know the kind I mean. The kind of valentines that needed to be cut out. Each corny valentine was matched to an envelope, which not only had to be cut out but had to be glued together. Picture a chrome kitchen set around which sits a pile of fresh-faced kids, eating cookies, drinking milk, sharing the glue, passing the scissors and assembling valentines. Got that picture in your head? Well, we were like just about any other family. We weren’t Norman Rockwell’s picture-perfect family. Milk was spilled. Scissors were passed, menacingly, and some of the valentines weren’t exactly cut out along the lines, to say nothing of what the glued together envelopes looked like or the amount of glue that was squeezed onto fingers and into hair. Sooner or later, someone did the math and realized the cookies weren’t shared evenly and the number of completed cards didn’t add up to the number of completed envelopes or the intended recipients. I haven’t even mentioned the tasteless jokes and taunting about who had a boyfriend (or a girlfriend,) or the gibes about how many cards one or another among us would get—or who was the most popular and who wasn’t going to get any cards at all. There were tears and laughs and burps and giggles and maybe a raised voice. Yep, those were the good old days.
At the school we attended, there was a cardboard valentine mailbox, decorated with hearts and flowers, on the teacher’s desk. When we arrived on the appointed day, we “mailed” our cards. For most of the day, we sat anxiously at our desks waiting for the moment when the teacher decided we had behaved well enough to get on with the delivery of the cards. Our names were called out by the teacher and the teacher’s pet handed out the cards. Of course, this scenario took place in the ’50s and ’60s. And in every classroom, there was one perky kid who ended up with an enviable pile of cards and one kid who only had one or two. My mom, being the kind of mom she was, made sure her brood sent a card to every single one of our classmates. No matter what. Egads. The pressure of sending a “love note” to the kid who picked his nose, had cooties, ate glue, wet her bloomers or was the schoolyard bully, was overwhelming. Mom always checked each of our cards to make sure we put our name on the card as the sender. How I feared—and loved—Valentine’s Day. At least one mom would send cookies and Rice Krispies squares—often, it was my mom. Needless to say, Valentine’s Day at St. John’s School was emotional. Some kids’ feelings always got hurt. It was a fact of life. Not everyone was going to be someone’s “ginger peachy”.
And here I am, sitting with bunch of sixty-year- old valentines in my hand. I used to wish my Mom hadn’t made us send cards to everyone in the class, especially “those kids.” And now, I think she must have known how it felt to be left out. She wanted us to be kind and openhearted. One of the cards in my little stash is from a kid named Lawrence. “To Theresa, From Lawrence N.” it read. “Let’s Bee Friends Forever.” On the front is a cute little bumblebee boy and a cute little bumblebee girl playing Jacks. Lawrence was one of those kids. Wonder what he’s doing these days. I hope he’s found the LOHL.
Comments (0)