Ah, elementary Valentines days were like no other.
Usually right around the 1st of February (as opposed to seeing aisles pop up on Dec. 26 now), there would be a single aisle in the grocery store with cards and candy, and boxes of themed Valentines for kids to pass out to their friends at school. They'd all be in red cellophane with window to peek inside and see the jumble of cards shaking about with the little pack of white envelopes that tasted so, so nasty.
You'd hem and haw and keep picking up the boxes and peeking inside and putting them back until your Mom got impatient and made you choose one before she left you at the store.
There was no mandate that every kid in class gets a Valentine from every other kid in class. It could be heartbreaking or exhilarating, depending on your order in the elementary food chain. But a lot of times, Moms insisted on you using them all for every person in the class, going by the list the teacher had sent home. Then you'd have to very carefully select the ones that would be as neutral as possible for those kids that would turn into Ralph Wiggum otherwise. (Enjoy the Simpsons valentine episode here, find Ralph starting at mark 4:00.)
Sometime in that first week of February, you had to scavenge for a shoe box to bring to school. There was actually school time for arts and crafts to make them together. (Prior to the boxes, it might have been a brown paper lunch sack, but boxes were way cooler!)
Trying to poke the starter hole with safety scissors typically resulted in gaping, gouged holes in your shoebox lid, but you could then attack and straighten it into the mail slot rectangle.
You'd fold construction paper over the bottom and the lid and use way too much tape and glue to keep it together at the seams. The best teachers provided a roll of, at least in the 70s, very space-agey foil to make a shiny silver box. And you'd fold your construction paper down the middle and start cutting half hearts to unfold and Elmer's glue to your box.
The girls would get the paper lace doily hearts to use with their construction hearts and layer them, if they wanted to be super fancy.
And you'd get into the markers and fight over the best colors, and draw in the rest of the space on your box to make it uniquely yours.
That was about it for your box decorating options, unless your teacher had gone wild and provided stickers, too. Show-off. ;)
rookie mistake: mail slot isn't big enough to receive the lollipops or boxes of Sweetheart conversation candy that some Mom inevitably brought for the whole class, because we weren't all going to be on enough of a sugar high from the party.
And on Valentines Day, you'd be restless and unfocused the whole of the day until that golden hour when Moms started showing up, cookies and drinks and napkins and cups in hands, to set up in the back of the room.
You'd finally get to retrieve your (finally dried with glue globs showing) masterpiece from the shelves and place it on your desk, counting on your best friends to fill your box with the "best" pick of their Valentines. Those were usually bigger and only came two to a package and had three folds, instead of the regular two. (And there was always the one for teacher.)
And when you got home, you'd go through them all, laying them out in lines, deciding whose you liked a little better, what those veiled messages might mean (did he pick that one out just for me?), and whose Mom clearly bought the lamest Valentines at the last minute when the kid wasn't around.
The boys usually picked out the least romantic set they could possibly find, but no matter. The Valentine companies still loaded them with enough suggested love that you could invent their intentions if you wanted.
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