esrosedotblog

WILL YOU BE MY VALENTINE?

I never quite knew what this meant. Always a little confused about gender I wondered if it was OK to send to other boys.

Well, yes, up to the age of puberty, then, fuck all, no! I got that one soon enough. You would be seen as a faggot if you did that. Well, not if you were a girl. But I wasn't.

In grade school we had Valentines Day boxes. You did your cards and addressed them and put them in the box. One question was how cheap would your cards be. They sold cards in books that you could punch out. Cheap. Some of these books were pulp paper not good stock. Cheaper were templates to make cards. My mother had some cards from when she was a kid. I liked looking at those. Ours weren't much different.

People would keep an eye out for who was putting cards in and how many they had. I know that some kids didn't put any in. Couldn't afford it. Word would get around about this.

Then on the day, they would dump all the cards out of the box and some special teacher pet kids would deliver them. Probably I was one of them.

This is an example of how we institutionalize cruelty for kids.

First of all everyone competed to be a person who got more cards than anyone else. This is a bit hard to achieve as there are only so many kids in the class so many would max out. But there was always some kid who would get more. Where from? Another class? Stuffing the box? Who knew.

The sad part was the kids who got less. The kids who almost got none.

Another cruelty was the comic or insult card. Some kids would get these. Laughter.

I don't know if they do this anymore but I hope that they figure out a way to keep this shit from happening in public. Or something. Maybe the teacher could predict who would not get many and stuff the box. I don't know.

Yes. I hear someone out there saying "don't be so soft". This is prep for life.

Well, fucking exactly! Little kids being indoctrinated into the idea that love involves numbers, quantity and no slams with comic cards.

I got over it I think. But I know that I didn't like it then and I don't like it now.

The holiday? Nice as a passing thing. Fun to do if it is kept simple.

We do some here at home. I got some cards. I sent some cards. Enough already. Let's move on to something important like Presidents Day.

Labels: gay identity, holidays, kidtime