VDay Surprise #1

Feeling better today, luckily my posts for today through Friday were scheduled. So, I edited this one long enough to say THANK YOU for all the well wishes. I did end up doing a little writing. About five hundred words was all I could handle. :0) At any rate, the comments did much to cheer my dreariness. :0)

As a child, my mother would have a treat of some sort on Valentine's Day for me, but it was never a grand celebration with cookies or parties or any such nonsense. I don't believe I ever saw my dad take her out on a Valentine's Day. (Looking back, with three kids, I know why.) So, all through those horrible years called teenage I never had a boyfriend. Well, it was for various reasons. I was just so smart, it intimidated all of the hot guys. (translation: nerd) And I was about as obvious as a gray speck on the floor with my nose buried in a book or notebook writing all the time.

Fast forward to my first Valentine's Day. The year, 1996 and I was 19. My boyfriend and I were living on love in a tiny apartment outside of Ft. Worth, TX. Literally, living on love. No clue where the money for next month's rent or any of our bills was coming from. Oh well, the day was beautiful and sunny. The clouds in the sky contrasted in perfect blue and white art forms. Since we lived on love....we decided to celebrate by going for a drive. Yes, we could fill our tank, get a pack of cigs each and a Dr. Pepper to split on our 11 dollars.

After our stop at the gas station to simply put gas in the tank and grab cigarettes and a drink (I found some change in the floor of the old Datsun 200sx (his baby-gag me) and we even split a king size kit kat), we drove off into the uh..sunniness. It was mid day and the wind felt good through the open windows. We listened to music at high decibels and laughed with each other.

We were cruising about 55 and in the middle of some deep conversation about the lyrics of some Beatles song, I'm sure, when the hood flies up in the air and slams into the windshield. Broken bits of glass fly into our laps, hair and Dr. Pepper. THAT was tragic. We pull over, without a cell phone-or one of those huge mobile phones-and then drive 25 mph the whole way home and wonder how in the hell we're going to replace a windshield in order to drive around to find a job. It was our only car.

By the end of the night, we ended up back in our tiny apartment with stacks of mattresses for our couch and ate a lowly dinner of ramen noodles with the last bit of hamburger we had left. Happy Valentine's Day.

I remember going to bed and thinking well...next year will be better. And it was. We had money. We had each other. We weren't so lovey dovey anymore. Perfect, right?

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Right....Tune in tomorrow. :0)