Middle School Boys (and Girls)Ruined Valentine’s Day For Me

Cruelty is so easy, kindness and understanding require strength

Remember when you were in kindergarten, and you made a Valentine’s Day mail box to hold all the paper hearts, stickers and candy received from your classmates and teacher? When I was small, I remember Valentine’s Day being yet another excuse to get candy, but also a day to get admiration, friendship reassurances and the awkward understanding of what a “crush” was.

It was the old school (70’s to 80’s) version of likes and subscribes that came only a few times a year, along with birthday party invitations, holiday treat bags, party invitations in general, getting picked for teams, etc. I enjoyed Valentine’s Day until the wretched, dark and confusing years of middle school.

As many of us know, middle school is a special circle of hell for many of us. Unless you are one of those kids who peaked in middle and high school (so sorry), most of us had one foot in childhood and one in puberty for those sorry three years or so. I was what one would refer to in the vernacular as “dorky as hell.”

My mother was still picking out my outfits until 8th grade. I had a mullet hair cut for two of those years. I had glasses that many mistook the lenses for deep space telescope lenses — thick. I had an overbite which my parents could not address until I was in 9th grade because braces were a serious expense to middle class families. My body shape was a large apple on a celery stick. With a mullet and glasses.

Adorable nerd is the phrase you are searching for, dear reader.

I was in Gifted classes. In the 1980’s, they gave you an IQ test for the Gifted program if you showed either extreme boredom and behavior issues or you were acing everything put in front of you and wanting more.

I was not a naughty, cool, edgy gifted student like Val Kilmer’s character in “Real Genius.” No, I was a goofy, people pleasing, curious girl who loved English and History and Science, and detested Mathematics. I found other girls not like me to be a complete mystery. And boys…after I turned 11, I found them to be awful. Just so goddamned awful.

Especially from the ages of 11 to 14.

According to my journals, of which most I have kept since I was 10 years old, I had a crush every other week. I also began to have some negative interactions with boys. I used to hang out with boys, play touch football, have water balloon wars, play video games, talk about certain movies and cartoons. I wasn’t quoting football stats or having regular wrestling matches or anything. I could hang, but I was not totally immersed in what were considered typical masculine interests back then.

I liked to feel pretty, wear a dress now and then. I just wanted my dress to have pockets to carry potential weapons, notebooks, pens and books.

As soon as I started wearing the infamous “training bra” to the touch football matches in 7th grade, everything seemed to change. One boy reached over and snapped it from the front, under my barely there breasts, when a strap stuck out of my t-shirt and apparently announced it was time to be creepy. I kicked him in the balls. We were never cool with each other after that. To this day, I still think of him as a nasty little jerk. He probably still thinks of me (I hope) whenever he thinks about doing something to a woman (or man) without consent.

During all of this turmoil, I had a hardcore crush on a boy named Frankie. He was the class clown, and a smart ass. He was in my gifted class, and he had some very clever ideas for inventions, and his presentations were so entertaining.

Everyone liked Frankie, even though he was shorter than most, and he had not grown into his face and body yet, like so many boys that age. He had big, beautiful blue eyes but I thought he was smart, interesting and funny. I didn’t see the meanness right away. I was very naive for a girl in middle school.

Hey, neurodivergent peeps! How you doin’? Do you feel me? Do you see me? I sure do see you now!

I was a late bloomer, too. Other girls were wearing make up and tight Jordache jeans and doing their hair like Duran Duran music video models, and had gotten their periods. They seemed so self assured, so much more elegant and sophisticated with their Swatches and perms and thick, raccoon eye liner.

My parents, being very conservative, and thrifty, would buy my clothes at Sears and my shoes at bargain shoe stores. My jeans had the same stitching as Jordache, but not the label. I was not allowed to wear makeup until I entered high school. When I finally got my period at the end of 7th grade, my mom relented and showed me how to shave my legs and let me get my ears pierced.

I only wanted these things because I saw other girls wanted them. Looking back, shaving my legs after the second or third time became a pain in the ass. The bleeding once a month thing became one more thing I felt awkward about, not older or more worldly in any possible way.

The whole womanhood thing was learning a new culture. I could be polite, but I was not exactly ladylike. My friends and I had our own inside jokes relating to academia, fantasy novels, school, etc. I had a very loud, boisterous laugh. I had opinions. Suddenly I’m supposed to be demure, but cool, smart, but not too smart, sexy (no concept at 12 years old) but not too sexy, talk, but don’t talk too much.

So one day in 1984, I took my birthday money and went to the Hallmark store, which were huge back in the 1980’s. I bought a Valentine’s Day card and some candy I thought Frankie liked. The card was not particularly romantic or even adult, it was what I thought was cute and funny. Frankie was the local comedian so I thought I should appeal to his love of laughter. I put a note in the card he could return to me stating, “Do you like me? Check yes, no, or I don’t know.”

Like many kids back then, we took our surveys with paper on many topics in notebooks called Slam books. “Do you think John is cute? Check yes, no or not sure. Do you think Julie is a slut? Check yes, no, or I don’t know. Have you ever drunk vodka? Have you ever french kissed?”

On and on the questions would ask getting more and more personal. Brutal pre teen behavior before it went online was very prevalent, the only difference was we didn’t always blast it for everyone to see. Slam books were not allowed, as they were often used to bully students, spread gossip and speak of “inappropriate sexual and drug/alcohol using behaviors.”

I had already admitted in another girl’s slam book I had a crush on Frankie. I tried to talk to him about his inventions in class. Unfortunately, he only had eyes for Cheryl, who was pretty, blonde and probably grew up to be a pharmaceutical company lobbyist. He would mildly tease her, tell her how cool her Ocean Pacific and Ron Jon t-shirts were (I lived in FL), and she would complement him on his slip on checked Vans. A mutual admiration society.

I gave Frankie his valentine at lunch time, when we were all outside the cafeteria, hanging out at picnic tables in our cliques and groups. I walked by where he and his friends normally hung out, and left the envelope with his name on it taped to a paper bag filled with candy. Then I hid with a friend in a crowd of kids in a shadowed area of the yard, where the covered picnic tables were.

I watched as Frankie came out of the lunch room, spotted the bag and picked it up with a confused but curious look on his face. His friends were laughing as he opened it up. His face went from confused, to surprised, to disdain. It wasn’t pretty Cheryl, it was goofy ME giving him a Valentine.

My friend Janet whispered, “Oh no, I tried to tell you, Jen..” I watched in horror as he took the $3.95 card (expensive for 1984) and began to rip it into pieces, then he pretended to vomit them all over the ground. He then began pelting his friends with the candy pieces, as I slunk lower and lower, until I was under the picnic table. I don’t think he knew I saw his reaction.

Later on, when we had our class together, he leaned over to Cheryl and pointed at me, telling her what a terrible and gross thing I had dared to do to him, the Great and Tiny Comedian Genius Inventor of 7th Grade. Cheryl laughed. She handed him a blow pop out of her stack of candy valentines she had received, and within a week, they were “going together.” It lasted three weeks, which is actually three years in middle school time.

Glad they had me in common to bring them closer. I cried a few times in the girls bathroom that first week.

Of course I was devastated. I had never seen such a gleeful display of rejection and disgust before. I had watched boys in my neighborhood joke around about crushes or girls they liked but I had never seen any of them talk about them like they were dog shit. I had never witnessed them be cruel.

Fine, I decided to have a faraway crush on another boy. Frank was out. Billy was in, and his name replaced Frankie’s in my diary and in the new round of slam books. I no longer saw Frank as clever or even funny. I realized some of his humor was to punch down and understood it was because he was a short, skinny guy who was put in the “nerdy” class and he could not deal with it without being an insecure ass to others.

Frankie did get socked in the nose by a punk skater boy for making fun of his “Goodwill” clothes, which 6 years later became the grunge uniform. After that, Frankie stuck to material having to do with pop culture, Saturday Night Live skits and our teachers. I never heard him make fun of another student again, at least in front of most of us.

Finally, Frankie “relaxed” and didn’t do it. (I am sorry, I could not resist making that 80’s reference.)

But it still hurt. I did not understand meanness dished to others out loud, without provocation. Middle school is full of this behavior. High school is too, it just becomes more sophisticated and low key the older one gets. No one announces (like in the movies) you are gross. They just don’t talk to you or acknowledge your existence unless they have to. Middle school is more in your face because kids haven’t learned the fine art of subtle cruelty and establishing unspoken hierarchies.

I watched people scurry in the grocery store for balloons and flowers today. Here’s a gigantic mylar balloon, some over priced South American grown roses, a card and maybe some candy to say I love you. Most are going through the motions, doing what is expected in modern dating and relationship rituals.

I dunno, maybe try demonstrating one’s love and admiration on other days, besides a holiday originating from a pagan Roman festival where people whipped each other with animal skin thongs and goats and dogs were sacrificed?

Perhaps cruelty was already built into Valentine’s Day from the beginning, before middle school and late stage capitalism. Who knows? Just try not to be like Frankie, be nice, or at least civil. Teach your kids not to be assholes to other kids. And celebrate love year round, not because you have to.

Thanks for reading, I can be found at: https://jenadriftinaseaoftrees.medium.com/