Found Another Crush

In my last post about Valentine's Day, I wrote about three crushes I had in grammar school and how one of them brought me my first Valentine's Day gift. I mentioned that I had liked one boy, Allen, the best. He was a wiz in science and math. He always won the science fair awards from third-grade one. He was one of the people I competed with for top grades in out class. I had heard from my mother many years ago that he had dropped out of college and was writing poetry and novels.

Imagine my surprise when he found me on FaceBook a couple of weeks ago! We have been corresponding by email for the past few weeks and seem to have an easy time "talking" to each other about the past and what we are doing today. He lives in New York City and does indeed write poetry and novels and also does voice-overs for PSAs and commericials, and and also works at a radio station. He has a 21-year-old son and has been married and divorced. He changed the spelling of his name to Alen Pol Kobryn, from Allen Paul Kobryn, and you can even find out about him in Wikipedia. He is very much as I remember him, and I enjoy writing to him.

Funny how people pop into and out of your life all through the years. 

My First Valentine's Gift

I was in the 5th grade and I had crushes on three boys in my class. I got valentine in school from all of them and I sent them all valentines as well. All three of the boys I had a crush on lived on the other side of town. Our entire class exchanged valentines on the day before Valentine’s Day, which fell on a Saturday that year.

One of the boys, Timmy Fitzgerald had bought me a box of chocolates and wanted to come by my house on Valentine’s Day to give me the chocolates. Well, on that Saturday, we had a terrible snow storm. My mother told me that probably Timmy would not be coming over because of the bad weather. However, apparently Timmy had very persuasive powers with his father, and he and his father drove all the way across town so that Timmy could give me the box of chocolates.  I treasure the box the chocolates came in for quite a long time afterwards. My mother was shocked that Mr. Fitzgerald drove all that way to our house for Timmy to give me the chocolates.

I remember the box so well. It had a satin pillowed covering on the top of the heart-shaped box.There was a plastic flower on top of the box, too. I kept my treasures in that box for quite a few years.

My crushes were just crushes, I liked Allen the best; he was very smart, as was I. But he couldn’t get to my house easily. His father had a disability and his mother worked to support the family. But I liked Allen so such. And Jimmy was also one of my crushes, but that crush ended in fourth grade when I found out he liked a girl in his neighborhood.

Jimmy and I connected when I lived in Albany. We had lunch and caught up on all his family (there were 12 children in their family!). We still keep in touch on holidays and birthdays, Allen, who now spells his name Alen, recently found me on Facbook and we have been corresponding through email every since. He works as a voice-over professional in New York City and write books and poetry. Alen sent me an article yesterday on Timmy, who was retiring from his Assistant District Attorney’s position in Oneida County. My mother had found an article on him years ago, so I knew he was an ADA. My mother also talked to Alen’s mother and she told her he was writing (this was many years ago). The article Alen sent was really nice; Timmy has been the ADA for abused and neglected children and has 10 children of his own!

It’s strange how I have reconnected with about 4 or 5 of my elementary school classmates. I have more contact with them than I do with high school friends or even university friends. Perhaps it was because we grew up together and feel more comfortable with each other since we spent 9 of our formative years together. The article Alen sent me prompted me to write about my first real Valentine’s gift from a little boy who was able to get his father to brave the winter storms to come to my house on Valentine’s Day.