Heart Breaking & Entering

Since Valentine’s Day was last week, I want you to take a peak at the condition of the flowers that your significant-other sent you. We’ll get back to why I asked you to do that in just a moment.

I would have been happy to get a carnation from anyone, but my real hope was that I’d get one from George, the adorable blond in my art class. His passion and talent for art only fueled my crush, but I never had a chance to say anything to him other than, “Have you seen the rubber cement?” Usually, I would blush and run away before George even replied.

I was internally lamenting about my singleness when Tiffany, one of the most popular girls in high school, plopped herself down in the seat next to me. Tiffany had a perfect attendance record, so she was a huge hit with the teachers; she did a ton of charity work so she was a hit with the parents; she was athletic so she was a hit with the cheerleaders, and she developed gigantoid boobs when she was 11, so she was always a hit with the boys. Normally, girls like Tiffany just gave me stink-eye in the halls, but I had one thing going for me: I was good at drawing.

“NO, stupid!” She whispered into my ear: “It’s George’s locker combination.”

I was fairly confident that this plan would work, since it sounded reminiscent of the schemes I had read in trashy romance novels and those “how to meet the love of your life” blurbs in our local paper. That night, I took the $15 I saved up selling drawings of comic book characters to the other kids at school and I bought a Mylar balloon, some roses, and a dorky little teddy bear. I agonized with the shop clerk over the inscription on the card. Eventually we settled for “Happy Valentine’s Day. This secret admirer doesn’t want to be secret anymore. Let’s talk about art at Friendly’s [Ice Cream] after school? Call me – xxx-xxxx.”

I had 50 cents left over, so as a reward for my bravery, I purchased myself a 50 cent strawberry cheesecake lollipop. It was only after I opened the wrapper that  a detail dawned on me – I had his locker combination, but I didn’t know what his locker number WAS. I scrounged around for change to use the payphone (this is before cellphones, people), but I had literally spent my last dime on George’s Valentine’s Day present. I begged the shop-keep to refund my 50 cent lollipop. He glared at me and shook his head. He grabbed the lollipop out of my hand, threw it into the trash, and silently slid the 50 cents back to me.

“Thank yooooooooou!” I called as I bolted out of the front door toward the payphone in the courtyard. I struggled to walk across campus, my heavy backpack, arms full of Valentine’s Day supplies, and tiny skirt posing major hazards in my journey. In the phone booth, I did a clumsy tango, placing the flowers and bear between my legs while I flipping through my trapper keeper full of phone numbers, and balancing the phone in the crook of my neck.

“What? I gave it to you!”

I nearly dropped everything and lost the balloons trying to recover. Eventually, Tiffany returned with the magic numbers – 1141.

I threw the phone back onto the cradle and ran to the girls’ bathroom. I dropped all of my belongings to the floor to access the damage. The thorn had stayed attached to the flowers but managed to pierce my skin enough that the entire right ear of the white teddy bear was covered in blood. I immediately dunked the bear’s ear into the sink to scrub him clean. June, my arch-nemesis since middle school, came out of the bathroom and gave me a weird look. I tried to ignore her as I cleaned up my wounds and dried the bear’s head under the hand dryer.

I went over to Locker 1141, looking over every last inch of the Valentine’s Day gift to make sure there was no forensic evidence on it. I entered the combination and…nothing. I tried again and heard a click, but the darned door wouldn’t budge. I pulled and pulled until a kindly janitor walked by.

“Here, let me help you, little miss,” he said with a Caribbean accent. He pulled out his keys and popped it open. A ton of sheet music popped out of the locker. ” If yah keep jammin’ dese tings in the locker, your locker will keep jammin’.”

“Thank yoooooooou!” As soon as he turned his back, I threw the sheet music back into the locker, shoved the Valentine’s Day gift in there, and shut it.  I took the late-bus home and didn’t utter a word about my plan to a soul.

That night, I barely slept a wink, imagining the teddy bear and flowers waiting for George in his locker. I wondered what the sheet music was, and if George would ever play me a song. I imagined our first date at the Friendly’s Ice Cream and wondered if he would hold my hand.

The next day, I woke up to what I thought would be my new life. “Go back to sleep, ” my mother said. “Iz a snowday.”

“Snowday?”

Indeed. Not only was it snowy that Friday on February 14, 1997, but the snow continued well into the next week. I over-analyzed the situation and realized how weird George would think I was for breaking into his locker and putting in some weirdo letter and Valentine. The anxiety was unbearable. I prayed for a snow plow so I could retrieve the items…I prayed a time machine…I prayed for death!  It was the end of the day on February 19 when I received a phone call.

“Hello, Stephanie?”

“Yes?”

“Hi, this is Dawn….um…I didn’t see you at school today…”

“What? We had school today?”

My mom, who listened to all of my conversations from the other room, replied, “Iz still too snovy, I don’t vant no bus getting in an accident and killing my only child, you’ll go to school some odder day!”

“Oh, am I in trouble?” I asked the girl. I didn’t know anyone named Dawn, so I assumed she was school administration.

“No, uh, I was looking for you because you put flowers into my locker.”

I mentally rejoiced for a second. Someone else got the flowers, so I was saved!

“Oh, I’m sorry about that. You can just throw them out, it was a mistake.”

“No, I saw that they were for George S. He has the locker next to mine so I just gave them to him. I…just thought you should know.”

I want you to take a look at those flowers from your sweety again. See what crappy condition they are in? Imagine a flower decomposed far, far worse than this.

Word about “the incident” got all over school; apparently, the flowers exploded all over the locker, turning completely brown, but not before secreting a mildewy goo onto the bear and poor Dawn’s paperwork and sheet music. June was all-too-happy to pitch in with a description of her walking in on me as I was “ritually cleansing the bear” in some kind of bloody love potion as a part of a Wiccan ritual to get George to love me. Not only did George never speak to or look at me again, Tiffany also pretended not to know me.

After high school, I moved to a new city in an effort to shed some of my weird reputation, only to find out that George was coincidentally attending the same college as me (yep, he thinks I did it on purpose, probably to this day!)

So much for romantic gestures, huh?

Photo by Torvald Lekvam