Gosh, You’re Swell!
That day of days when you were allowed to acknowledge a fondness for the opposite sex, legally allowed to write her, and she you. She might be the popular girl who smelled of raspberries, wore a clip in her hair, sat near the front or middle, where you studied her.
She never got in trouble, never had scabs on her knees, her father a doctor, a dentist, a minister perhaps, Kiwanis club, Eagles? Blonde with a wide easy smile that was never focused at you. Maybe she didn’t even know your name.
There were only 30 of you. You spoke her name, in the dark or the bath, the last face you’d see, hoping it might carry over into sleep. She was the girl for you, the girl you dwelled on from the back of the class.
Then, that saint’s day of massacre — Hallmark’s grand coup, introducing love to rock-throwing boys and horse-obsessed girls when either sex — yes, sex — momentarily grasped limited rein to imagined love, radiating someday ramifications, practicing for the first time, perhaps impossible declarations. For, with five minutes to spare, teacher announced time had come — class time even — when we could exchange cards.
Everyone came armed with cards and, in some cases, homemade ditties — tiny heart candies, memorable messages like, “Won’t you be mine?” And “You’re swell.”— and we’d exchange these hopes, these prayers, placing them and tiny candies upon unattended desks, our name neatly written beside our now-declared public crush.
Some kids gave one to everybody, but others aimed only at those they really liked. I do not recall my strategy, but I had only a few cards, homemade. I’d made ’em the night before with Mom’s help — a cut-out heart glued to a doily with her name, followed by mine.
Returning to my desk, I found bunches waiting. I felt bad if I got one from somebody I’d ignored, worse if I’d given one to someone who had forgotten me. The day’s score overall appeared favorable.
Smiles beamed all around as this one turned, or that one; smiles bloomed like roses, eyes locked, blushed, turned away, all before the bell rang, when we spilled into the playground with its kickball, foursquare, dodgeball divisions, scattering our newly exposed, just released, jejune exchanges into the four winds, the entire school clad in an alien kindness we might wear the rest of the day, ebbing imperceptibly by day’s end, the palpable kind of glow the popular gal wore all the time.
Diminishing some by the last bell, reviving a rekindling of memory of our playground after third period, flooded with love.
Larry Crist sends out his missives from Trinidad.
