Valentine's Day

by DE Moening

When I was child, growing up in Seattle in the Fifties and Sixties, one of the big events in school was the Annual Valentine's Day Exchange in which our 6th grade class participated.  Everyone was expected to buy (we never made Valentines!) enough Valentine cards for the entire class, and a special one for the teacher if you wanted to really suck up. 

We had about 30 kids in our class and so this was quite an expenditure for a kid who made maybe 25 cents filling a bag with garden weeds.  I knew right away that I wasn't going to spring for cards to everyone in class. People like Carla Hubbard, who would pin me down on the playground at recess and dribble spit onto my forehead or Eddie Van Deussen could just lump it. Eddie... who thought he was sooooo cool because he was the only kid at Fairview Elementary who had a tattoo.  It wasn't really a tattoo; just an ugly scar received when wiping out his bike at the bottom of Powerhouse Hill, but he always treated it as though it was.

No.  They, and others of their ilk would get no "Be My Valentine" crap from me.  I had other plans that would not be denied and they centered around the most perfect vision of girlhood ever brought forth by a benevolent God upon a grateful planet... her name was Connie Cavanaugh (sigh)

I worshiped her from afar, which in my 6th grade world meant gazing from my living room window up the street six and a half blocks and on the right to the Cavanaugh place, which had one of those monkey-tail trees in their front yard.  I could only see the top of that tree, but that was enough for me. I knew full well that if the truth of my ardorous wishes were known to Connie, I would be visited by some hideous affliction. Maybe a prominent zit right between the eyes... or suddenly bursting into flames. 

So I did the only thing I could do in a situation like that; I spent my entire fortune of $2.30 on the most ornate, lacy, flamboyantly luscious Valentine's card I could find at Hallmark, and sent it to Connie, signed "Your Secret Admirer." 

I waited for her to perform the complex deductions that would (of course!) ultimately lead her to logically realize it was I who held her in such prepubescent lust. She would then be compelled to "make the first move" and actually speak to me at lunch or some other socially acceptable venue, whereby I could carefully nurture our new relationship amidst the obligatory "Oohs and Ahhs" of our wretched, little gray-faced classmates. The pinnacle of this intricately orchestrated scheme would be the reward of her sweet, simple kiss; offered to me as a token of... whatever! Shit...!

Of course the deduction Connie arrived at was that Eddie Van Deussen had sent it and of course he assured her that he had.

The world has turned many times since then and I know that Shakespeare was right about the course of true love...  But I also know that if you're lucky enough to take a chance once in a while, open yourself up a bit, put ALL your chips on double-zero and give the wheel a big spin, sometimes you hit the jackpot. 

As I, no doubt, will advise my own grandchild someday... You have to actually knock on the door, kid.  You can't just keep staring at the monkey-tail tree.