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Be my Valentine
Do they still exchange Valentine’s Day cards in school?
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that in this new age of enlightenment when every child apparently wins an award in every competition, the practice has either been discarded or drastically revised.
After all, kids can be unkind. Left to their own devices there’s a good chance some would get more cards than others and there’s even a risk that some of the cards might be less than complimentary. And we wouldn’t want anyone’s feelings hurt the way mine were when I went to Washington Elementary School in Bergenfield.
As I recall we always made our own classroom mailbox out of a cardboard box that was covered with red crepe paper and it would stand on a corner of the teacher’s desk for a week or so before Valentine’s Day waiting for the kids to drop their cards through the slot.
All of the cards were of the homemade variety. We certainly weren’t going to waste our pennies on store bought cards so we made everything from scratch, including the paste, a lumpy mixture of flour and water.
We’d make hearts by folding a piece of red paper in half and cutting out one side of the heart with scissors. That way when you opened up the paper you had something that resembled a heart and both sides, no matter how misshapen, would at least match.
Simulated lace was made by folding a piece of white paper over and over and cutting holes in it so that when you unfolded the paper it resembled a slice of Swiss cheese. Then we’d assemble all the pieces and paste everything together with our homemade concoction of paste. Generally, the lumpy paste would ooze from between the layers of papers and when it came time to pass out the cards most of them would be stuck together.
On Valentine’s Day someone – probably the teacher’s pet – would be designated as mailman and he or she would take the cards from the box and call out the names of those destined to receive a greeting.
The teacher would always get more cards than anyone else, at least one from everyone in the class, and she was just about the only one to get cards signed with our real names because we wanted to be sure she knew we had remembered her. Next to the teacher in popularity came the girls and since no boy would admit to sending a card to a girl we always suspected that the girls sent them to each other and maybe even to themselves.
As for the boys, our fondest hope was that we wouldn’t receive any cards at all because going up to get one if your name was called was a traumatic experience.
“Eddie Flynn,” the designated mailman would call out, and the room would be filled with hoots and cats calls as I dragged my feet down the aisle to reluctantly accept an unwanted piece of paper and paste.
“Who’s it from, lover boy?” the other guys would taunt, and when I was young I had a tendency to blush at the slightest provocation.
“Look, he’s blushing,” someone would shout and I’d shout back, “I am not,” which only made my face turn a brighter shade of red.
When I got back to my desk I’d act as if I couldn’t care less as I tried to sneak a look at the card – secretly hoping that it might be from one of the cute girls in the class – but, of course, it would invariably turn out to be hate mail. Probably a grotesque face scrawled on a piece of paper and scribbled underneath some poetic sentiment like, “Roses are red, violets are blue; skunk cabbage stinks and so do you.” Of course, I would realize it wasn’t from a girl at all but from one of the other guys, probably my pal Mickey, who was just trying to embarrass me.
Not too many years later, when I was in service, I recall another type of mail call when I couldn’t wait to hear my name called. When the mail would catch up with our ship the crew would gather on deck where a Yeoman distributed the letters.
“Ed Flynn,” he’d call and I’d shout “Yo!” There was no blushing, no embarrassment even though I knew they would be real love letters from the girl I had married before shipping out. And more than 60 years later that same girl and I are still exchanging Valentine cards, although it’s hard to find one with a suitable message. Maybe I should make my own. I’m sure I remember how to cut out those hearts and I could type out a message on the computer and then paste it all together. That is if I can find the flour to make some.
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