Valentine’s Day is almost here. And for me, it comes with memories of buying, signing and giving away Valentine’s Day cards. Growing up in Woodstock, Illinois in the 1970’s, these cards were usually available at the Schultz’s Department store on the square. (A sort of Neanderthal Walmart for you younger folks) and my mom would purchase about six boxes of them, with about 20 cards in each of them that somehow, I had to share with all my siblings.
The boxes themselves were wrapped in red cellophane with a clear window by which people could see what was inside. They were smaller than a regular card and had some sort of depiction on the front, usually with a clever saying…such as a kangaroo saying, “I would be hoppy if you were my Valentine.” Sometimes Mom would find a “Peanuts” themed box and we could send Snoopy, Linus or Charlie Brown with a clever saying as well. All the cards were pretty corny and looking back, there is an innocence about them that I really miss in this weird, dystopian world of the 21st Century.
The funny thing about it, as I recall, is that in grade school we gave cards to boys and girls.
In our polarized society today, there would be pundits quoting statistics about how wrong that could possibly be in the formation of a child’s sense of sexual identity. Nope, it was a more pragmatic time. It was all about sending and receiving cards without anything sexual, morally compromising or developmentally destabilizing about it.
There would be a Valentine’s Day party, which wasn’t much of a party. The last 20 minutes of school would be turned into a raucous frenzy, in which everyone would go around, handing their cards out of a paper lunch bag that they had transported them with. If you were lucky, you might even be given a small bag of heart shaped candies that tasted vaguely of mint and had odd sayings, like “cool cat” or “be mine.” Or you might have some hot-cinnamon flavored red candy hearts stashed into that Valentine’s card. Your new acquisitions would go into the bag of the cards you brought to school. Everyone got their cards distributed, their coats on and in line for the school bus. Party over.
There was no direct correlation to the notion of “romantic love” but rather the idea of “be my Valentine.” The mystery of what a Valentine really was didn’t really come to surface until about 5th grade when we were taught that Valentine or St. Valentine was an early Christian that was martyred by the Romans. And it wasn’t until college that I found out that St. Valentine was an amalgamation of three different martyrs by that name. Each of those Valentines had the thinnest of connections to the idea of romantic love. No, instead it had to do with being killed for protecting and giving aid to early fellow Christians. It was the act of brotherly love that created the martyrdom (and subsequent feast day) of all the Valentines. I think Hallmark sort of made the attempt to St. Valentine signing a note to his jailer’s daughter as “your Valentine” and thus a booming, billion-dollar business was born.
You had to make sure you gave a Valentine to everyone in your class. The idea of leaving a kid out, even if that kid was the bully, was pretty verboten. I know Mom was pretty tough about “loving your neighbor” even if he just threatened to knock your teeth out after school.
Valentine’s Day was a sort of “detente” of any hurts, anger or shyness. The cards were signed on the back, the kid’s name on the envelope, and the most neutral of all sayings was there for the recipient to perhaps puzzle over, but not really to draw any conclusions one way or another about the sender.
Strange enough, in this world of cellphones and texts, the notion of sending a Valentine card still survives. There are the odd sites that sell “corporate” Valentine’s cards to sites that sell ultra-large Valentines. And of course, the best Valentine’s were ones that were handmade, usually reserved for your parents or a best friend.
Sadly, by about 7th grade, the whole Valentine card idea to all your schoolmates fell apart when I was a kid. Just in time for puberty, the idea of sending a card to anyone with a heart on it meant that you liked that person more than a friend. The whole notion of brotherly love was replaced by romantic love. Of course, that was played up, too, by card companies, flower companies and chocolate companies. Yes, the whole notion of what 3rd and 4th graders were giving and receiving was way off in the rearview mirror. Now, the acne-awkward march to adulthood took place, and it could be a matter of high school survival if that card to a girl wasn’t reciprocated. No, better to squelch all such risks.
And last summer when I was sifting through old papers that managed to survive 30 years in my parent’s basement, I found one of those old Valentines from grade school. My name was on the envelope in crude lettering and when opened there was the corny saying and on the back, a kid’s name of someone I couldn’t recall. Who for all I know might now be dead. And after all these years, I felt a brief wave of nostalgia. Maybe because it went back to a more forgiving time. A time without “three minutes hate.” It was a time when I was A-OK for that day by that kid. And that kid was A-OK for that day by me. I was happy that 3rd grade Martin McCormack, the shortest and most awkward kid in the class, was on that day, somebody’s Valentine.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
READ MARTIN’S OTHER BLOG HERE.