Ghosts of Valentine's Day Past

Yesterday, as I was reflecting on my history of V-Days in a moment of nostalgia, I realized I had a few interesting stories about the day devoted to love and romance. For someone who was single until the age of 23, I figured that this was pretty cool. I could've spent all those years crying or depressed (especially as I got older), but that never happened. God loves me too much to not show me. That goes for you too.

As I began collecting my thoughts and writing down my stories I realized that this was going to be longer than I thought. So for your viewing pleasure, here is the first story in my collection. Enjoy!

Now everyone my age can remember Valentine’s Day in elementary school. I always came home with Valentine’s! It was a win-win situation. The cute boy in my class always got me one and I always got him one. Too bad every other girl in my class got one from him as well, maybe they were preparing my generation for their fate of finding romance on the next season of The Bachelor where your boyfriend dates 8-10 other girls at the same time. Oh, well. I specifically remember one year, I believe it was third grade, when I got a particularly memorable card from a classmate at Northwood Elementary. It was from a boy whose name was Shaun. I did not have a crush on this boy and I’m sure he himself had nothing to do with making the card, but it was so beautiful that I kept it… for several years. It was heart-shaped and had pink, purple and red glitter around the edges. I have no idea what it said but it had his picture inside. Shaun moved away that year as his dad was in the air force just like so many of my classmates’ parents. One day a few years later, probably sometime in middle school, my best friend Elin was at my house. Elin’s dad was also in the air force during elementary school and she lived in Germany from the time she was 5 until the 4^th grade when her family settled in Crestview.  As we were rummaging through my “junk drawer” she came upon Shaun’s Valentine. When she opened it and saw his picture she said that he looked familiar. I thought that couldn’t be possible considering Shaun moved away in the third grade and Elin arrived in the fourth and went to a different elementary school than me. But, she just knew that she has seen him before. We soon discovered after doing some research (aka asking her mom) that Shaun had been in Elin’s kindergarten class… in Bitburg, Germany! We found Elin’s class picture from that year and sure enough, there he was! Funny how you are connected to people in different ways. Elin and I are still best friends to this day, over 15 years later. There are many things that bind us together and Shaun is just one of those things. I have no idea where Shaun is, what he is doing, if he’s happily married, maybe even with kids. I hope his life is fulfilling. More than that, I hope he knows that however small it may seem, he made a plain, freckled faced third grade girl smile for several years on Valentine’s Day and strengthened her bond with her best friend years later. Thank you, Shaun. 

Elin and me at the beach in high school

Elin and me in January 2012