Paper Hearts and Lollipops

His name was Zachary Donald Browning. I remember because Z was my favorite letter of the alphabet to write, especially in cursive. I had made the Z exceptionally large and curly and swooping. It was rather gorgeously made for a girl who had trouble tying her shoes. It had a lollipop taped to the other side of the lopsided paper heart. The lollipop isn’t there anymore, but I’m pretty sure it was the kind with the chocolate center. My mom never let me use the kind with bubblegum in the center.

But none of that is important. The important part was that it was the last valentine I was to give out that day. I put it in my bag with all of the others; right before my mom called me down to walk me to school, as though that day were any other day. However, it wasn’t and we all knew it wasn’t. A part of my heart fluttered in the excitement of doing fun things for the holiday and receiving candy for no real reason. However, the larger part fluttered because of that name on that lopsided heart.

I sat in my chair and began to fiddle with my skirt impatiently. I am sure that my hair was falling out of my ponytail and turning into little strands of frizz, as it always seemed to do back then. I looked around at the chattering from girls and the chattering of boys. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was observing how it was clear they were talking about the same thing, yet their attitudes couldn’t be more different. I think it was my second time observing the gender barrier. The first is a story best saved for another time.

Valentine’s Day in a second grade classroom is a perfect example on why Communism doesn’t work:

Everyone is given twenty minutes to distribute valentines to everyone in the entire class. It was anonymously done through dropping the goods into bags on the desks. There was to be no student left ignored. Everyone received the same number of paper hearts and cutout cards.

However, as true as this as, it was not equal. The cards with the coolest cartoon characters on them, the prettiest hearts, the best candy, they were all saved for special people. They could be friends, or something more. These were the last valentines, the ones saved until the very end of the fifteen minutes. This was when everyone was returning to his or her seats, so the receiver could see the giver in action. It was a very sacred and unwritten event that all children seemed to understand.

The teacher began to lie out the rules. It didn’t matter what she said. We would all figure it out. Adults always underestimate kids. We understood a lot more than they ever could care to accept. Then she said the magic words, “Go!” she said, in that playful teacher voice that you never hear real adults use. And we scrambled. Anyone else would have called it chaos, but I was too focused to notice. Fifteen minutes was a long time at the time. But that didn’t keep me from rushing from desk to desk, pushing through and trying to make sure everyone was getting my paper hearts.

Time was ticking, like sands in the hourglass. And as I saw the paper bag on my desk begin to fill, my paper heart began to beat with excitement. I remember mentioning something about butterflies to my friend Angela. She laughed and asked me why. She didn’t care about the valentines she got from boys. Not even last valentines. Boys still had cooties as far as she was concerned.

But please, cooties were for little kids. By second grade, I was convinced that one should be over that.

That’s why when the teacher began to chime a countdown, I began to scramble around, clutching my last valentine and searching through the small crowd for Zachary, “Five,” she said in a singsong. I was holding it to my chest. I started to make a small crinkle in the edge of the heart. I kept wiping my hands on my clothes, to keep them from sweating.

The kids were giving the valentines out. It was my chance. It was my time to hand my paper heart away. To Zachary Browning. So I took three whole steps forward before my small mind couldn’t quite understand what was going on. I didn’t know whether I should step back for keep going. I didn’t quite know it, but I was afraid. I was afraid of rejection. I was afraid of him laughing at me.

But most of all, I was afraid of discovering that I wasn’t quite as old as I tried to be. I was afraid that I really didn’t know as much as I thought I did. So I just stared blankly for a few seconds.

“Four…”

I don’t remember what he looked like. But I knew he was wearing overalls that day, for he had just put a valentine into his overall pocket. I didn’t understand poetry or symbolism then. I can’t say I do now. However, even I could understand that must have been a special valentine to him, for he put it next to his heart.

“Three…”

It took me another second to realize that it belonged to Shana Andrews, who dressed up as beauty queen for Halloween, with a tiara and dress and everything. I was a bumblebee that year. And in my mind, we never changed out of those clothes. She was the beauty queen, handing the prince a lollipop with a bubblegum inside.

“Two…”

And I realized that I was just the overweight, bumbling little thing. I would flit from flower to flower, but never really moving anywhere.

“One!”

So I sat down and put my valentine back into my bag. It passed my mind that he might realize one would be missing when he got home and counted his valentines. I always counted, why wouldn’t he?

“Alright! Settle down! Settle down!” The teacher began to laugh. I put my bag under my chair and tried to focus on the candy and the cards inside that I got to see when I got home. And like all of my attempts to push things out of my head, it worked like a charm. It was my first real experience with procrastination.

I still have it, the last valentine. It sits in my drawer, right between the application for the job I never applied for and the letter to my deceased grandfather that I never sent. I stare at it every once and while and I feel the crinkle along the edges and hold to my chest to see if I can still feel my heart pounding.

They say you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take. But inaction spawns the thoughts of what could have been. And they hatch and haunt your brain until you finally start to view the decision as a mistake.

And mistakes invoke change. So I tuck this paper heart into my coat pocket and I set into this world, no longer young, but still believing I know it all. And I smile, knowing that Zachary’s heart will be the only last valentine I never send.