Waiting on Love

The puppy love spawned by Valentine Day festivities in my fifth-grade classrooms was still alive when spring, that time of the year when young men's hearts are said to turn to fancy, arrived in 1949. In the fifth grade at Largent school, where they served real food for lunch, there was a young, blond, Adonis, also in the fifth grade.
As was the custom back then, each of us decorated a box for Valentine Day and placed it in the back of the classroom. The boxes had slots so we could drop a valentine in the box for the owner. Of course, it was expected that everyone would give a valentine to everyone, but if we didn't sign our name to the paper missals, who would know if we didn't give one to the class nerd, or if we gave the most beautiful one to the boy every girl swooned over.
Some valentines were handmade with lace and paper doilies or with velvet cutouts glued all over them. Some cards had a sucker stuck through the commercial love note, which made it hard to put through the slot, and some were cut out of ready-made books.
The cards had different messages but they all were about love. A kitty-shaped cutout might say, "I think you are purr..fect." A card with a picture of the earth on it said, "I'd go to the end of the world for you."
I decorated my shoe box with red and white crepe paper, stretching the ribbon of paper to make the edges curl and then I taped the white strip around the box that I covered with red. I glued white heart-shaped doilies around the top of the box and made a good-sized slit, so any card would fit, and I printed my name on one small doily.
Lonnie's box was covered with cloth. His mother gave him some cotton scraps that she had left from a quilt she was making. He glued the scraps to the box and it looked like his cat had used it for a scratching post. He printed his name on the box with red paint so everyone would know it was his.
I bought a real commercial card for Lonnie. It was pink, but it had a boy and a girl riding in a white car with heart shaped puffs of smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe. Inside the card said, "Lover's Lane, here we come."
On Valentine Day our teacher passed out cupcakces decorated with candy hearts and cups of red punch. Then we opened our valentine boxers. Lonnie had more valentines than anyone in the room, boys or girls.
Lonnie never said anything about the card I sent him, but in the spring he called me up and asked me to meet him in the balcony of the Liberty Theater on Saturday. My mother wouldn't let me go.
On Monday, I learned that Lonnie had called every girl in the class, with the same invitation, and then he invited all the boys to come to the balcony to watch the girls arrive. There were only a few girls who showed up at the theater, but I was so happy I wasn't one of them.
Whatever Lonnie's heart was turning to that spring of 1949, it wasn't anything fancy. I was so glad my mother made me wait for another spring and another young man.