My Broken Heart

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I had a crush on Agnes. This crush began on Valentine’s Day, 1938. In the following year I spent a lot of time dreaming of what could be each time I looked at her. Agnes sat behind me in the classroom. I found many reasons to turn around and give her my ardent look (this was different from my significant look).

She scolded me, “Jakie, don’t turn around so much. The teacher is looking at us.”

I think Agnes liked the attention, so I replied, “Let her look. I don’t care. I want to talk to you.”

Then came the teacher’s voice, “Jakie, turn around. You have looked at Agnes long enough for one day. Save some for another day.”

This was Miss Spence. She was a pretty redhead with freckles. When she helped you at your desk and leaned over, the front of her blouse fell open. I had a lot of trouble with long division that year. She had a lot of freckles—as far as I could see.

Valentine’s Day was here again. To get ready, the class made a box with a slit on the top. Before making the slit we wrapped the box with crepe paper decorated with hearts and then we cut the slit in the top. Because none of us had any money we had to make our valentines.

First we cut out a number of patterns of hearts of various sizes from cardboard and used them to draw outlines on red construction paper. These we cut out and wrote some silly little verse on the one side and the name of the person to whom it was to be sent. Then on the other side, we signed it with either our real name, or some ridiculous pseudonym such as “guess who – your secret admirer – tall, dark and handsome.” The cards were put in the mailbox for delivery on Valentine’s Day, when the box was opened and the “missiles of love” distributed. This was the crucial time. It was important that you as a student got as many as or hopefully more than the other students. Valentine’s Day was a popularity contest. As there were thirty-two students in the class, a perfect score was thirty-two. There were extra points for getting a valentine from a student in another class.

I felt sorry for Julia. She came from a very poor family. She didn’t have nice clothes. Some of her dresses were made from bleached flour sacks. There were times when you could read the faded words, Robin Hood, on the back of her blouse. Her father was very mean and hit her and she came to school with bruises on her arms. Sometimes she didn’t have any lunch and the teacher gave her part of hers. She got only one valentine. The one from the teacher that everyone got. She cried. I wished that I had sent her a valentine—but at the time I had other things to think about.

I counted my pile—twenty-four—not a bad score. The one I noticed immediately was the one from Agnes. It was a big red heart with a short poem on the front that read,

“Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Sugar is sweet,
And so are you.
Just stop turning around in your seat.”

Her name was on the back in big bold letters. I was ecstatic. Agnes had noticed me.

The card I had sent her said,

I signed it, “From the boy who sits in front of you and likes to turn around.”

I carefully put the card I received from her in my back left pocket. This was a pocket that I seldom used for any item in daily use. My slingshot was in the back right hand pocket where it was handy for a quick draw. I kept this card in that pocket where it stayed until the next washday when Mom emptied my pockets. My sisters wouldn’t go through my pockets because they were afraid of what they might find. One day, Annie had found some gopher tails and that was the last time she did that. So the job fell to Mom.

Of course, I forgot to remove the card from my pants and Mom found the card. She held it out to me and with a sharp, suspicious tone in her voice asked, “Who is Agnes? Why have you got this card? What church does she go to?”

That was Mom. She was already worried about me getting married and I was only 12 years old.

I replied, “She’s a girl at school. We send a card to every student in the class. It doesn’t mean anything.” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Agnes was Catholic.

I didn’t like lying but there were some things that even Moms didn’t have to know. With a heart that was breaking, I took the card and tore it in half. A man has to do what a man has to do. I put the pieces in my pocket. Later, I stuck them back together with a piece of brown, sticky-tape and put it away in my box of important things which I kept hidden in my dresser.

With Valentine’s Day over, I could now turn my attention to other important things like playing shinny with frozen road apples, looking for beer bottles and smoking Turret cigarettes in their shiny 5-cigarette packages.

If I had time I might even bring in some wood.

Jack Funk is a retired school teacher living with the memories of times gone by. He has written some of these memories down and would like to share them with you.