PAN's Flea Bag

Sometimes I wish I would have become a teacher. Not necessarily because I would have loved to teach, but because I know a bunch of aspects that I would have wanted to change. Thinking back to when I went to school, there were a lot of things that could have been handled differently, and better, if you ask me. Valentine's Day is one example. When I was in 4th and 5th grade, a box was placed in the classroom a couple of weeks before Valentine's Day, and the idea was for the kids to put little cards and letters to their classmates in there. Cute. Next to the box was a paper sheet with the names of all the kids in the class, and whenever you dropped a card to someone in the box, you were to put a mark next to their name. Why? To make sure that there was at least one card for every kid in the box, by the time Valentine's Day came around. If there were kids who still didn't have cards addressed to them - no one would be getting their cards. It seems fair in theory, doesn't it? Yeah, not exactly. There were a couple of smart kids in the class, who knew that they would end up without cards, simply because someone else hadn't gotten any. The day before Valentine's day, they sat down and wrote cards to the remaining card-less kids. The next day, on Valentine's Day, the "popular" kids in the class got a whole bunch of sweet cards, letters and stickers, while some other kids got one folded note each. "Hey, at least they got something," some might argue, but when the kids unfolded those notes, they read something like:

 

 

There were probably 4-5 kids in my class that got these types of cards, and in my opinion it would have been a whole lot better not to get a card at all. Kids can be pretty mean, and sometimes they don't even realize. Other times they do. ...I believe this was a case of the later, as these kiddos could have easily written "Happy Valentine's Day" and left it at that, but they chose to inform the receivers that they weren't writing them because they wanted to. This situation was mishandled, I say, and it is not something I would have offered up the chance for if I was the teacher. It must be hard though, to foresee these types of things, but there had to have been a smarter way to spread love on Valentine's Day, or a better system perhaps. I had completely forgotten about this, until today, when it suddenly popped up in my head.

 

Later on, in 8th and 9th grade, the Valentine's Day card-shenanigans had evolved. There was no longer a rule of everyone having to get a card for them to be handed out, but instead people began sending out cards that were not from the person they said they were from. The card would have a charming little phrase scribbled down, and it would be signed by someone in the class. Usually someone very unexpected. I remember I got a card from a guy in my class, someone I would have never expected to write me anything, and I thought it was nice. Never did anything with it as I had no interest in him, but I was still pretty touched by the fact that he apparently liked me, and that he had been brave enough to let me know. A couple of years later (can't remember how I figured this out) it turned out that he hadn't sent me a card. Or anyone else. The card was not written by him, and he hadn't even known that someone had sent it in his name. That was when I realized that a whole lot of cards had been making their way around the classroom, cards that were written by someone else than who they said they were written by. Now I am wondering if someone ever got a card from "me" back then, and if they still think that I wrote it. Who knows.