After what has seemed a lifetime of giving the wrong presents for Valentine’s Day, this year I’m proud to say we got it right. And by we, I mean The Wife and me. You see, this year we found the world’s best Valentine gift, and strange as it may seem, once we found it, we gave that gift to another loving couple. Unknowingly, they gave the very same gift right back to us.
My Valentine blunders stretch back for years, leaving a trail of broken hearts and tears, mostly all mine. It all started at Mt. Olive Elementary School in Old Mrs. Crabtree’s third-grade class.
At Mt. Olive, it was a tradition on Valentine’s Day for two students per grade level to become special love envoys. They traveled between classes all day delivering your hand-written card to your one true love. The cost of the service was 50 cents, all monies going towards flowers around the front of school.
Expensive, I know, especially for anyone with more than one true love. Luckily for me, I only loved Candi or I would’ve had to go longer than a week without lunch.
Anyone with 50 cents could send a Valentine card to anyone he or she wanted. I wasn’t sending a card to just anyone; I was sending a card to Candi.
Unfortunately, she like Preston Weston III, and it was my duty to convince her he was the wrong guy. Living over on the Duke of Gloucester, Preston’s family was rich, but I had something he didn’t: true love for Candi.
To show it, I’d outspend Preston. I went without lunch for an entire week and turned in my collection of Coke bottles to buy a bag of heart-shaped candies and five blank cards. Inside, I glued the candies to spell out my messages professing love to the girl who smelled like coconuts.
On Valentine’s Day, I gave instructions to the special envoys to deliver one card an hour to Candi no matter where she was at the time. By the end of the day, I was the talk of the entire school, but not in a good way.
Sometimes expressing true love can cost you in more ways than one if it’s not reciprocated. Back in the third grade, it cost me my dignity, three dollars, a bag of heart-shaped candies, and no lunch for a week.
I learned that day an act of true love can’t be bought. It can only be given.
Since then, I’ve made many blunders and learned many lessons surrounding this day of love, but none as important as what I learned that day so many years ago while living on a street not so far away.
So what is the greatest Valentine’s Day gift of them all? Time with the one you love. By watching our two granddaughters all night, we’ve given that gift to The Boy and the Mean Lady.
And by letting The Wife and me watch those little souls who love us so much, they have given the same gift to us. Happy Valentine’s Day!
[Rick Ryckeley, who lives in Senoia, served as a firefighter for more than two decades and has been a weekly columnist since 2001. His email is storiesbyrick@gmail.com. His books are available at www.RickRyckeley.com.]
