CityView Magazine

8 | Februar y 2020 S O M E D A Y Y O U ' L L T H A N K M E My Funny Valentine BY MARY ZAHRAN A h, Valentine's Day…a day to celebrate romance, to savor chocolate confections, to enjoy a bottle of wine and a candlelight dinner with your beloved as you gaze longingly into each other's eyes … In a perfect world, every Valentine's Day would be just like that, but, alas, we don't live in a perfect world. Instead, we live in a world that pays no mind to the calendar, so when February 14th rolls around, life goes on pretty much as it always does, with all of its twists and turns. However, sometimes those twists and turns occur precisely because it is February 14th. On the Valentine's Day morning of my second-grade year, I decided to wear something to school that was holiday- appropriate—I put on my new, bright red bloomers that my grandmother had given me for Christmas. Where or why she purchased them, I will never know because they looked like they belonged on a can-can dancer, not on a 7-year old girl. But I loved them, and because they were red, I was confident they were perfect for the occasion. Shortly aer I arrived at school, my friend Reese and I decided to have a puddle-jumping contest. We found the largest puddle on the playground and proceeded to compete. On about the fourth jump, I lost my footing and fell flat on my backside into the mud. e only thing I injured was my pride. When my teacher saw what had happened, she sent me to the principal's office to find something to wear from the Lost and Found closet. e principal, Miss Pitt, was a tall and notoriously stern woman. It was widely rumored that no one had ever seen her smile. I was apprehensive, to say the least. Miss Pitt asked me if I was hurt, and at that moment, all I could think about was whether I had ruined my bloomers. I pulled up my dress to show her what I was really upset about, and when she saw those red bloomers, she threw back her head and laughed so hard she lost her breath. I was more mystified than offended because I didn't think Miss Pitt knew how to laugh, that she had forgotten how when she became a principal. I don't remember much else about that day— what I wore from the Lost and Found or what eventually happened to my beloved bloomers—but I never looked at Miss Pitt quite the same way again. I learned two important things that day: never wear your best undergarments to a puddle- jumping contest and never assume that a person with a stern demeanor doesn't have a keen sense of humor. Years later, on Valentine's Day, I learned another important lesson, only it was a dog, not a human, who was my instructor. Our family pet, Tiger, was an eccentric animal. She would only sleep under a smelly blanket spread out on the floor, and, as a puppy, she frequently barked and moved backward until she ran into a wall. She was also a chocoholic. Medical experts tell us that chocolate is deadly for dogs, that horrible things happen to them if they even look at a Hershey bar, but Tiger was different. She never passed up a chance to eat chocolate, even if she had to climb on top of furniture to get to it, and she never suffered any ill effects except to be yelled at for climbing on the furniture. She was seemingly indestructible. So, when I received a 5-pound box of Whitman's candy as a Valentine's Day gi from a boy I was dating, I immediately

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