LOVE AND OTHER TEEN-AGE CRAZINESS

L'AMOUR ET AUTRES IDEES D'ADOS

When I was looking at old ...very old, keepsakes our mother had kept in her attic bookcases one day (our mother kept EVERYTHING!) I found a diary; well maybe more of an end of the year "cute" notebook "thingy" that teenagers signed for each other at the end of the school year in the US. (I spent 4 of my teen-age years in Grosse Pointe, Michigan).

The said "diary" had a lot of signatures- some names I definitely remember well- and of course they had the predictable, typically teenager accompanying cute/clever comment/"poems".

One read: 

"Never kiss Jay by the garden gate 

Love may be blind but the neighbors ain't".

I know, I know...

Well after all these years I remember Jay. 

Cute and fun. Different, in a very "more-interesting-than-the-average-teenager-at-the-time" kind of way.

I never kissed him at any time- and we did not have a garden gate, so there!. 

I don't remember it was ever even the beginning of an idea- a kiss I mean-. I was too young and much too shy anyway. Being raised by relatively strict French parents was not a big help on Valentine's day or any other day of the year for that matter, romantically speaking!

Whatever others in the class might have thought, I must have said something or acted in some way to inspire the comment. I LIKED him, that's all. Misinterpreted body language surely.

And yet, I remember him...

Happy Valentine's Day Jay! 

Wherever you are!

au revoir.