A Valentines Day Story

No no no, not the sappy romantic kind. This story is from elementary school, where Valentines Day was a Big Huge Deal. I'm sure all you readers know this, but here is a re-cap: 


If you didn't buy or make valentines for everyone in your class, then you were the lamest of the lame. I used to stay up extremely late (for a 9/10/11 year old) hand-crafting valentines for my class. One year I made pigs out of clay and pasted them on cards and drew a cartoon customized pig for each of my classmates. But that story of my weird pig obsession phase is another story for another day. 
Another huge part of Valentines Day in class was The Box where everyone put your valentines in. You would leave it on your desk, and everyone walked around and put Valentines in everyone else's boxes. Then you got to take the box home and spend the afternoon looking through all of your notes again and eating the candy. 


One Valentines Day in 4th grade, I took the bus back from school with my mom, day-dreaming about looking through my box all afternoon. But then-- the horror!-- I got off the bus and realized, as the bus was driving off, that I had left my beloved box on the floor. 

I proceeded to freak out. Lots. Worst Valentines Day ever. But for some reason, that day of all days I had memorized the bus number. So we went home and called Metro, told them our predicament and the bus number, got the route, and found out the time that that same bus would stop at the Metro stop. We met the bus there at the designated time, and there was my hero the bus driver, holding out my box! We gave him a handmade valentine, and there was joy throughout the land!
And that, my friends, is the story of why I love handmade valentines and public transportation.