Every Valentine's Day, in my head I think of it as Balentine's Day.  For some reason when I was a little kid that is what I thought it was called.

I also thought that a vagina was a bagina, and I bet my friend Johnny Seagal that I was right.   I lost the bet, but even worse I was embarrassed when he yelled out to his mother "Donny thinks a vagina is a bagina," and she corrected me from the other room.   How humiliating for a nine year old.  I guess I did not think words started with "v's".

For a few months in 1968 I also thought David Crosby was Graham Nash and vice versa when looking at the album cover of them and Stills sitting on the couch on a porch.   It was an adjustment to learn otherwise.  It's like watching Tom Brady for a year and thinking he was Peyton Manning.

And those curved little nail scissors.  I just realized a few weeks ago why they are curved.  All these years I have been using them upside down.  Which just goes to show you that nail scissors are reversable and actually work just as well either way.

Back to Balentine's Day.  In sixth  grade I had an awful crush on a girl in my class named Janice.  When I was near her I would sweat and could hardly speak.  She didn't give me much attention, and I always suspected she liked my best friend.  Then on Valentine's Day when the kids in the class exchanged little cards, Janice smiled and gave me one.  I opened it up and saw that she wrote "love ya!"    My eyes popped out of my head.  She loved me?   I took the little card home, closed my door, and read it over and over and touched the ink with my fingers.  Could it be true? I wondered.  Did she love me?

My excitement and fluttering heartbeat was short lived.  I found out the next day that she wrote "love ya!" on everyone's card.  I felt like a lit match that someone suddenly blew out.

Spelling, and love on Balentine's Day, can be awful hard for a sixth grader.