Valentine’s Day always reminds me of a story from my childhood.

There was a kid in my seventh grade class named Harry Strauss. He looked a lot like Elvis and was just as handsome. He had that fabulous hair and he’d wear pegged pants (look it up). I remember one pair was dark blue with flecks of pink running through them. As you can tell I and the rest of the girls gave him plenty of thought even though we wouldn’t “dream” of associating with him, even if he paid any attention to us which he didn’t. He didn’t hang out with anyone from my school. I think his friends went to the Catholic school, Saint Margaret’s.

We thought that the kids from the parochial school were way more wild than those from my school, P.S.81, which was where the Jewish kids and the poor Catholics went.

My mother always said that because they wore uniforms and got punched by nuns during their school day they went nuts when they got out of school. My mother was a real Margaret Meade.

Anyway I don’t think that Harry actually got into any trouble. But because he never talked to any of us and rather than walk, he sauntered through the school halls, he just reeked danger.

Now why was I telling you this? Oh yeah, I remember bragging to my friends that Harry had given me a Valentine’s Day card.

What really happened was that he took the one that I put on his desk, threw it on the floor and told me to shove it up my ass.