THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 3, 1995 TAG: 9502030558
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
I almost gave up.
The right valentines no longer existed. Apparently.
Not the type I spent the better part of a Saturday trying to find.
A decade or so ago, it was the basic valentine for children. And had been for half a century or more.
A nickel would fetch a packet of them, innocent little cards with a single fold, carrying a cheery salute, enough to cover all your friends.
The innocuous kind you would give the teacher - or the teacher would buy to give to everybody in the class so nobody would go wanting.
One teacher, overwhelmed at the thought of anybody being overlooked, gave three or four little valentines, signed guess who, to each of the few who might get none.
Disguised her hand each time, she confided to me years later.
Before you slipped the valentine onto the desk that belonged to the girl across the way, you signed your name backwards: Yug.
Or the girl across the way, passing her valentine to the desk of the boy on the other side of the room, might write: Yram.
The young relative I had in mind, a 19-year-old three states away, is preparing to be a teacher, taking all sorts of heavy courses and working, too.
So I chanced upon a nonsensical gift, a token from two generations away that might divert her mind, a moment, from advanced chemistry - and then dropped by a drugstore for a card that would say, simply: Happy Valentine.
And found that violence has entered valentines.
There were cards featuring crash test dummies. Others offered monsters from Jurassic Park. A grinning Tyrannosaurus Rex with the message: Keep smiling.
In a dollar store was a rack with valentines on themes from Disney: Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid.
Children are exposed to an endless array of aggressive images. How simple the scene used to be.
I stopped by what would have been an old-fashioned dime store. No use; nothing there to fit.
Went by the Novelty Shop on 21st Street, a favorite haunt of mine for every season. Ample artful decorations and knickknacks, but little in valentines. I did buy a sheet of all sizes of sticky hearts.
Found a Woolworth in Virginia Beach. All kinds of cards. Bought a handful; but those of the right size or pattern had fulsome verses.
At the advice of another, smarter shopper, bought a tiny lacelike paper doily with the idea of sprinkling red hearts on it. Too fancy.
Gave up. Driving home, passed Carriage House Antiques on Granby Street. Wheeled around.
Inside a nook of discoveries of Marty McGaw were old-timey valentines, one from the 1930s of a dopey fellow, hunting and pecking at a typewriter a message: HAPPY VALENTINE!
You can find anything hereabouts. Given time. by CNB