A Valentine's Day Memory

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​A VALENTINE'S DAY MEMORY

     Today I came across this post from a friend on my Facebook page: 

      This message suddenly brought me back to the days of giving and receiving those ever-popular little paper Valentine's cards that back then used to look like this , 

...while I went by Patsy Ann Rupp and looked like this:

     Looking back, I remember when I was in grade school I used to send not one but three cards to each of the shy, unpopular kids in my class because I was worried they wouldn't get enough Valentines and I figured they probably needed a little extra love, anyway.
        Not, to be clear, that I was among the cool, popular kids. Au contraire, during those 'tween years I ran - make that walked - in the social slow lane. I knew not the facts of life. (I'm not talking about the sex facts of life, though I didn't know those, either, but the  life facts of life). I had no fashion sense (as exhibited in the above photo). I still played with Barbies at age 13. (See post from 3/6/2014, "Our Barbies, Ourselves"). 

       But none of that mattered, because during those years I had something even more important than social savvy or kid coolness. I had a kind of social Kevlar which permitted  me to bobble about the 'tween shark-tank blissfully oblivious of my low social status and hence relatively unscathed: I had a best friend.  
          Here's a quote from a blog I posted on 2/12/2014 called "Me And My Twinkie," in which I recounted my middle school friendship with Michelle and in which I compared us to two Twinkies in a package, 

​​...back in the good old days when Twinkies came two to a package:
        Did you ever see the movie "Dick" with Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams as the best friends?
        That was my friend Michelle and me in middle school.
        Except that we never accidentally baked a batch of pot cookies or got in trouble with the secret service, though, like the movie best friends Betsy and Arlene,  we did once write letters to the President (Kennedy). We mostly spent our time practicing our dance moves to Beatles records in front of the magnificent mirror that took up one wall of Michelle's living room;  walking to C&M, our neighborhood deli of choice, for a popsicle or a Tastykake; sewing miniature clothes and collecting fashionable outfits for our Barbies..alas for us, Barbies and Beatles did somewhat overlap. About the worst thing we ever did was catch a bad case of poison sumac  from scavanging through a mangy field for old soda bottles to return  to the A&P for the deposit money.  We were good girls.   
      So individually,  Michelle and I were probably too  naive and ingenuous, too close to the antithesis of what was considered "cool" among the pre-adolescent crowd of the early 1960's to have advanced  very far up the middle school food chain; but together we were  accepted among our classmates as a unit. And who cared if we weren't?  With each other we were comfortable and complete as two Twinkies  sealed in their cellophane wrapper.
      I can remember that besides us there were at least two other best-friend units among the girls in our class, as well as a pair of twin sisters who  more or less operated as a best-friend unit.  We were  part of the Twinkie Elite.
       Me and my grade school Twinkie, Michelle, the last time we saw each other, about 10 1/2 years ago at my mom's 90th birthday. 

      So anyway, while I was, I suppose, technically at the bottom of the food chain in grade school, I didn't realize it, and so was in a position to feel some sympathy, some rachmones for those kids who I figured were. Or at least I felt it for them on Valentine's Day. 
        In retrospect, I'll bet they all thought getting three Valentine's cards from me was pretty weird.
​       Happy Heart Day, everyone!