Valentine Curse

The first Valentine's Day that I remember was in First Grade. I remember the excitement, handmaking individual valentines for the girls in my class. My mother was a scrapbooker and we had fun crafting new and varied cards. She laughed as I insisted on making a special cards for a certain girl, whom I steadfastly denied having a crush on. I remember my mother's gentle laughter as she hugged me, amused by my childish deflections.

"You're such a beautiful boy, Lonnie." she said proudly. "I'm sure you're going to come home with piles of valentine's from smitten little girls."

"Yuck!" I exclaimed, but I secretly smiled at the thought.

The next day before recess, we all opened a brown lunch bag on our desk, with our names written large on them. The boys gathered the Valentine cards they'd brought in and went out onto the playground, while the girls danced around the classroom, depositing the cards they had in the appropriate bag. Then, they went out to lunch and the boys returned to the classroom and distributed their cards.

I had more cards to distribute than anyone else, because I had insisted that every girl in our class should get one. "No one should feel left out, Mommy. Everyone gets a card. Imagine how they'd feel if they didn't get a card." We'd made plain ones for the girls that I hadn't marked for the special card. Because I had so many, and had marked each one by name, it took me longer to distribute mine. When I looked up, the classroom was empty, except for the teacher, who impatiently shooed me out to lunch. She wasn't on playground or lunchroom duty, so she hurried off to the teachers' lounge for her lunch and rest period.

Bobby Benton was on the playground, bragging that he was going to have the most Valentines. Even in First Grade, Bobby was already sure that he was God's Gift to little girls. He'd also marked me as his favorite target.

"Hey, Loonie," purposely mispronouncing my name, Bobby mocked me, "how many cards are you going to get, loser? None, I bet. You're such a loser, Loonie!" Suddenly, other kids began chanting, "Loonie, Loonie, LOONIE!"

I turned and ran. Why does tormenting others come so easily to some kids? Bobby was a redheaded, freckled face kid, with gapes in his teeth, yet he felt superior to me and led other kids into mocking me. Of course, at seven, I didn't have those thoughts. I just felt hurt. But I had plenty of years in the future to parse the events of that day, and most days thereafter, attempting to understand my life.

I sat by myself in the far corner of the playground, until the bell rang, ending recess. I shook off the miserable feelings I had been indulging in and ran to the classroom with great anticipation. I couldn't wait to see the St. Valentine cards I was going to get. Did the girl that I (secretly) liked give me a special card?

When I got to my desk, boys and girls throughout the classroom were gleefully pulling cards out of their bags. Bobby lifted a thick handful up over his head, for everyone to see. He did seem to have the most cards. Well, I was betting that I had more.

I reached into my bag and... felt the bottom of the bag. I looked in and saw the bottom of the bag. Not one card.

Not one card.

Not one card.

I sat, looking into the bag, pretending that I was looking at something inside. I surreptitiously looked around the classroom and saw Michelle West grinning at me. I swallowed hard. I looked around and saw others laughing. I bit my lips and tried to hold back my tears. What I told my mother was right. It does make you feel bad.

I ran out of the classroom. I think I surprised the teacher, because I was out the door and down the hall before I heard her yelling at me. I didn't stop. I was out the door and running down the street before the janitor caught me and brought me back, tears of shame and embarrassment running down my face.

I sat in the principal's office, waiting for my mother to arrive. The principal couldn't make heads or tails of my sobbing and whining. When my mother arrived, she was horrified to see the shape I was in, sobbing, with tears and snot running down my face. She rushed to gather me into her arms.

As she held me and wiped the damage off my face, I tried to explain, "Nuh,,ah, un, nuh un", I whined. When she finally understood that I was saying "Not one", she was puzzled and asked, "Not one what, sweetie?"

My mother was the gentlest person I had ever met, and would ever meet, but the mama bear came out in her when she realized that I hadn't gotten one valentine that day. The principal actually took two steps back when my mother jumped towards him, even though his desk was between them. My teacher stepped into the office to check on me just as my mother exploded.

"How? How do you let a little boy get hurt like that? Did no one even think to ensure that no child was ignored?" She gestured to me. "He did. He made sure he had a card for every girl in his class. Where the hell was his teacher?" Her hands were gripping the edge of the desk, knuckles white with fury.

My teacher blanched and began to retreat when my mother became aware of her presence. She froze as my mother's glare focused on her. "Well," my mother demanded.

"It's never happened before - I didn't think...." The woman looked at the principal for help. He stepped up.

"Please go back to your class and find out why this boy was excluded from the valentine exchange." The teacher moved faster than I'd ever seen her move.

When she returned, she was shaking her head. "Lonnie wasn't excluded. When I asked the class why no one had given him a Valentine, most of the girls protested that they had. I don't know why his bag was empty."

As my mother hugged me, kissed my head, and told me that, "See, you had Valentines!", I knew what had happened. Bobby Benton and his cousin, Michelle West, both freckled redheads. He'd bragged that he'd have the most - because he'd stolen mine! And Michelle knew it. That way she was looking at me and laughing. And I'd given her my special card. I hated them both.

"I wanna go home. Please, Mommy. I wanna go home," I mumbled. I was embarrassed to go back to class. Everyone had seen me run out, crying. I didn't want to go back, ever. Mom had hugged me again, gathered me up, and had taken me home. I don't think the principal approved, but he wasn't going to cross the momma bear.

She kept me home the next day, Friday, so it was four days before I had to face my classmates again. Bobby started right in on me before class, "Wittle Wonnie go crying to mommy because he didn't get no valentines?" I didn't find it funny, but some of my classmates sure did. Enough to repeat it in a chorus.

Michelle came up to me with a big smile. "Lonnie," she started.

I'd had enough. The Greek chorus behind me had begun the fourth repetition, "Wittle Wonnie.." I exploded.

"Go away, you freckled face frightening freak!" The teacher had read us a book about an orge, who had been called a 'frightening freak'. It popped into my head and I just threw it at her.

I'd found a way to shut up the chorus. Michelle went from smiling to crying, stuck in place. Even Bobby was dumbstruck by my viciousness. I didn't care. I walked into class.

Behind me, I heard the Greek chorus start back up. This time, it was "Freckled face frightening freak! Freckled face frightening freak! Freckled face frightening freak!"

It salved my heart a little. I had gotten some revenge.

The next morning, I didn't want to go back. I fought with my mom, screaming and hollering. I didn't win. My mother didn't put up with that kind of blackmail. But she did arranged for my transfer to another class.

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I didn't have much enthusiasm for Valentine's Day the next year. My mom insisted that I make cards, and I got cards. I hardly looked at them. A year later, the fear and shame were still there. In my new class, the kids may have heard about the previous year, but no one seemed to care. But I did. I knew that I could get nothing.

But I did get a pile of cards that second year, but my enthusiasm was gone. Valentine's day just seemed like a day of danger for me. I was scarred. I would always hate Valentine's day.

Fifth grade, when I was 11, my mother became ill. She was my life, my everything. My father had died in Iraq, April of 2003. An IED had taken my father, and now my mother was slowly, gradually, disappearing before my eyes. My grandmother had come to help tend my mother, who was home from the hospital, although I thought somehow, they'd brought the hospital home. They kept saying she was in hospice. I thought it was short for hospital space. Strange people came to help clean and feed my mother, who was too weak to do more than pat my hand when I stood by her bed. She would try to engage me, although she was likely to drift off to sleep in the middle of sentences. "Who's your valentine this year, Lonnie?", she'd ask.

"You, momma. You're my valentine." I'd promised.

We had an art teacher, and I thought that I'd make my mother the finest card anyone had ever seen, and the teacher, aware of my situation and taking pity on me, helped me after school. We started the week before Valentine's, turning white paper into lace and red cardstock into hearts. Several layers, alternating between the two, made up the body of the card and I worked hard on the calligraphy of the inside message. I made up a poem:

"You're my mother, there is no other, I love you to the moon, that's our tune, So, I say to you, don't be blue, You are mine, Be my Valentine!

Love, your Lonnie"

We finished it up on Valentine's Day. The art teacher complimented me, saying it was indeed the finest Valentine card he'd ever seen. I beamed with pride - Momma would love it.

It was sprinkling when I left school, and I sheltered the large card under my jacket as I ran home, impatient to show my mother this example of my love for her. As I rounded the corner to my house, I pulled up short.

In front of my house was an ambulance, and two men were negotiating a gurney down the steps. The gurney had a wrapped body on it.

My fingers released my card. It drifted down onto the wet pavement. I think I stepped on it as I walked slowly to my house, praying that I was wrong.

I wasn't. My mother had died. Happy Valentine's Day.

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My grandmother took me to her home, since our had been a rental. I never thought I'd ever have to see any of the kids from my old school. It seemed far away.

My grandmother broke her hip almost a year later, and I was thrown into the foster care system. I had hoped Granny would recover and we'd be reunited, but only a few months later I was standing at another gravesite. It wasn't Valentine's Day, but it sure felt like it to me.

My aversion to St. Valentine's cost me at least two girlfriends in high school, not that I had any to spare. I rarely had money for dates. I tried to find jobs to provide me with at least some pocket money, but outside of mowing a few lawns for the neighbors, the chores my foster parents expected me to perform didn't allow me any time for regular work, so dating was usually only a dream for me.

Then there was my sartorial splendor. I'd hit a growth spurt after my grandmother's death and none of my old clothes fit me anymore, not even my shoes. Everything I'd been given with love, was taken away from me. My foster parents always ensured that I was clad in the finest clothes that had been donated to the local charities. As a poor orphan, I don't want to seem ungrateful for the kindness of strangers, but I quickly understood that people never donate anything a high school kid would like. I thought that they dressed me like a 90-year-old man, but I was quickly dissuaded of that idea.

As a sophmore, walking into my new high school, one of the local wits pointed at me, dressed in my flannel, pleated pants held up with suspenders (no belt loops on these "quality pants" as my foster mother called them) and oversized white, long-sleeved shirt, and yelled, "Urkel! Urkel!"

How many dates does a white Steve Urkel get? I could count all three years' worth on five fingers. When I said that Valentines Day cost me two girlfriends, I was rounding up from two girls desperate enough to be seen with me more than once.

So, the holiday in high school was a non-issue for me. It was in college that it reared its ugly head, again.

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In college, away from my foster parents' demands, I was able to find employment and had enough cash to not only date and dress myself, but I had enough extra money to join my father's fraternity. I was a bright student and was able to pay for college with scholarships and grants. I did worry that my 4 hours, five days a week shift at the local Pep Boys might hamper my studying and endanger those scholarships, but on reflection, I put in more work hours each week for my fosterers and still qualified for those scholarships. I figured I'd be fine.

After a solitary high school experience, I joined the Rho Eta Pi fraternity hoping to upgrade my social life. (I know, I've heard all the puns, about Rho eating a pie. In fact, my roommate Greg, bragged that we were the champion oral sex frat, and he was as happy to eat a Kappa as a Pi, and could feast on a Lambda, with a little mint sauce on the side). I had found my father's fraternity pin among my mother's jewelry when I received her things as I left the foster system at 18. The state had her things in storage for me, as well as the small savings account my mother had.

I don't know exactly how, but finding the pin, knowing that my father had given it to my mother, and she had treasured it, well, it gave me hope. Joining the frat also made me feel connected with my father and mother again. And maybe I could find the love of my life there, like Dad had.

For the first time, in a long time, I wasn't the "foster kid." I wasn't Urkel. I had new clothes, no one knew me, I could reinvent myself. I didn't tell anyone my back story. If asked, I would tell them my dad was in the Army and my mom, well, she was a stay-at-home mom. I would tell them about my wonderful, loving home life.

I seem to fit in at college. My frat bros were great guys (once initiation was over) and while a geek in high school, I was liked yet happily anonymous in college. I had money to date and had no trouble finding girls at frat parties who were willing to date and to give me the education in human relations I had missed in high school. And I was an attentive student.

Things went south second semester. Guess when. Yep, the Rho Eta Pi Valentine party.

There was a girl, a girl with dark red hair and a light brush of freckles across her cute little nose. She was wearing jeans that nicely framed the sexiest ass on campus. Her bandeau defined her breast, which were not large, but not small. They fit her tiny 5'2" frame.

When I asked her to dance, she jumped up, grabbed my hand and pulled me to the dance floor. I'd like to say she was a wonderful dancer, but will only admit that she was a very, very enthusiastic dancer. I laughed joyfully, as did she, as she bounced around the dance floor. This girl was a breath of fresh air. I felt all the cares of the world disappear in front of her.

After a couple of dances, I offered to get us drinks. I brought them to her out on the back deck, where we sat to cool off. I found out she was a communications major, a freshman like me, and was from the eastern part of the state. She had pledged the Pi Mu sorority, which unfortunately she told me right when I was mid-swallow. I coughed up the beer.

She patted my back and asked if I was okay. I sheepishly assured her that the beer had just gone down the wrong way. Actually, I had laughed mid-swallow because Greg had said that the one pie he wouldn't eat was a Moo Pie, or Cow Pie. That's how he referred to the Pi Mu's.

After I had spewed up the beer, the girl looked like she might want to escape my company. I suggested that we go back in, maybe dance again. She agreed, and as we walked back into the assembly room of the fraternity, she said, "By the way, I'm Mickie."

She held out her hand, and as I shook it, I replied, "I'm Lonnie."

Mickie's eyes went wide, and she stopped short, facing me. She looked intently at me. "Lonnie? Lonnie from St. Michael's Elementary?"

Suddenly, I heard a bellowing "Loonie? Loonie's here?" A 6'3", redheaded, freckled faced bully in a letterman's jacket pushed through the crowd. I knew instantly, it was Bobby Benton, and this Mickie was Michelle West, his cousin. My fucking luck. The two people who had destroyed me on Valentine's Day, reappearing in my life on another fucking Valentine's Day.

"We ain't seen you since your grandmother died! How was the orphanage, Loonie?" Bobby's voice and laugh boomed over the music.

Valentine's Day rushed up on me. I shook off Mickie's hand and fled. Back to my dorm.

It got worse. I returned to the house the next day, and the frat president and rush chairman pulled me into their room. The president, Stu, began. "So, Lonnie, you're an orphan?" I admitted to that. "So, what's this bullshit on the bio you turned in? Was Phillip Lawson really your father? Are you really a legacy or is that bullshit as well? Are you even Lawrence Lawson?"

I explained about my fostering. I swore everything in the bio was correct, except of course for the happy home life. I explained about Iraqi Freedom and cancer and the loss of my parents and my grandmother. I felt emotions rising up as I tried to explain wanting to reinvent myself. I stopped, not trusting my voice as my throat closed.

The president shook his head and said, "I feel for you, Lon, but you lied to us. To your fraternity brothers. You're not supposed to do that. Do we even really know you? What do you think, Paul?"

Paul shook his head, solemnly. "You know, if our new pledge, Robert Benson, hadn't revealed your deception, we might never have known about your falsehoods. You were made a brother under false pretenses.

"Therefore, we're going to strip you of your position as an active in this fraternity." I started to object, but Paul waved me off. "However, other than the minor deception of your home life, you seem to have been straightforward with us, so, Loonie, we are willing to accept you as a pledge for this spring semester." Stu and Paul looked at each other, happy to present this resolution.

I sat for a moment, stunned. I loved the fraternity and the brothers. I felt at home here. But, but... "Do I understand that Bobby Benton is pledging, too."

Stu answered. "Yeah, Paul just said so."

I wouldn't have minded pledging again. I really enjoyed the comradery, the fun of it all. But I don't think I would have enjoyed it with Benton. What made my decision easy was the fact that Paul addressed me as Loonie. One day around Benton and I was already Loonie to the leaders of the frat.

"Thank you, no. While I'm sorry I lied, it wasn't malicious or to cover any wrongdoing. But I do apologize for that."

I thought about telling them about Benton in elementary school, not just that Valentine's Day, but the almost daily bullying by the red-headed asshole. More to the point, his telling my classmates that my father had probably been shot for desertion when I'd lost him, and his taunting me after my mother died with "Little Orphan Lonnie", which more often was "Little Orphan Loonie". But no, it just sounded like whining.

So, I continued, "But no thanks. I don't think I want to belong to an organization that would have Barbie Benton in it." I'm meant to say "Bobby" but as I was trying to control my emotions, it somehow came out, Barbie. Or maybe it was because I had always though his name sounded like Hugh Hefner's old girlfriend, Barbi Benton.