Man of a Certain Age: The first crush and Valentine's Day

Do you remember your first crush? It’s been well over a half-century now but I can remember mine.

I must’ve been 5 or 6 years old when I crossed paths on the school playground with a little girl named Melissa. I was a painfully shy youngster and don’t remember approaching her in any way to express my feelings. We simply had recess together and I watched her from afar (oh geez, sounds a little stalker-ish).

Valentine’s Day seemed like a good opportunity to see if she wanted to be friends.

Over the past week, my wife has been helping our two boys with homemade Valentine’s Day cards but I don’t remember doing much of that when I was their age. I believe my mother just bought a box of premade ones at the store and I filled in the names of classmates.

However, I do remember decorating shoe boxes on a few occasions to be able to collect Valentine’s Day cards from classmates. Is that still a thing? Anyway, it would sort of be exciting to open up your shoebox and see how many cards were inside.

Back to Melissa. I believe I can remember spending a little extra time on her Valentine. I took a store-bought card and added a short, cute message. But nope, I decided that wouldn’t be good enough. So in addition to the card, I just wrote a separate “love letter” where I could expand on the special vibes I felt. Nah, that was too corny — what if the letter fell into the wrong hands and one of my buddies found out? Too dangerous.

Candy? Maybe candy was the answer to a girl’s heart. I’m not talking about a heart-shaped box of chocolates but those little chalky-tasting candy hearts with sayings on them like “Be Mine” and “Kiss Me.” Perhaps I could tape a few of those into the card.

In the end, I chickened out with the fear of being rejected. It’s just part of growing up, I suppose, although I must admit that I didn’t feel steady on my feet when talking to girls until I was well into my 20s.

Today, Valentine’s Day isn’t really a thing in our household. As I mentioned, the kids have their school-related projects and that’s great but my wife and I don’t mark the occasion. She told me early on in our relationship that she doesn’t expect anything from me. She’ll tell me that she already eats too much candy and she’s never been into flowers.

For years, I thought maybe it was a trick and that I should probably play it safe and buy her something for Valentine’s Day anyway. In the end, however, I don’t believe we’ve ever exchanged anything. Perhaps we had a nice dinner together (before the kids) but even then, I could see us deciding that the restaurants would be too crowded.

No, it’s more of an occasion for the kids. Grandma sent our boys a nice package in the mail with Valentine’s Day treats inside — her famous homemade cookies, some Hershey’s Kisses and a few gifts, including matching pajamas. They were both looking forward to Valentine’s Day parties at school but the wintry weather wiped those out (I’d bet almost anything that they’ll have those on Tuesday).

Back when my oldest son was a teenager, my wife had Valentine’s Day balloons with treats delivered to him at school. I wish I could’ve seen the reaction — his face probably went through a couple of shades of red.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

(Brad Fuqua is publisher/editor of the Philomath News. He can be reached at News@PhilomathNews.com).

Related