These two folks really are a couple of cards

Jim Goldsworthy, Columnist

The lady got her boyfriend what she described as a really cute Valentine’s Day card.

The front shows a mischievous-looking squirrel who asks, “Ya Wanna Do Something?”

Open it, and it says, “I’m Something!”

She said she was sitting at the table signing it when her boyfriend walked in, looked over her shoulder and saw what it was, then asked, “You got your card already?”

Turns out, they bought each other the same card.

There has to be a message in this, but I’m not sure what it is. That it happened really didn’t surprise me. A casual observer might look at them and say, “Opposites attract,” but they’re friends of mine, and I know that they think and operate alike on more levels than many folks would realize.

I’ll resist the temptation to say they picked the same card because they’re squirrely.

Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed is more like it.

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I don’t need to ask my doctor if I’m healthy enough to send Valentines. I just haven’t been lucky enough lately.

However, I do get Valentines once in a while, so I’m not like Charlie Brown waiting forlornly beside the mailbox.

A lady who’s become my friend goes with me to a dinner dance each December because her cousin is also my friend, and a few years ago he found out she liked the band that was going to play, and he knew I didn’t have a date. She sent me a Valentine as a way of saying “Thanks” for the last dance.

Our newest reporter is a young woman who recently was assigned to the Tough Man Competition. She also went to the pre-Valentine’s Day poetry reading.

For as much as these two things are at the opposite ends of life’s spectrum, she did an admirable job covering both events. I told her she handled the poetry reading much more adroitly than I ever could.

She said, “It was entertaining,” and I’m sure it was.

Poetry (limericks excepted) is not my cup of tea, nor is any kind of romantic literature — particularly the type wrapped in a paperback cover that shows a closeup of a woman whose hair is dancing wind-tossed across her face, standing under a leafless tree in what appears to be an early-evening British Isles gloom, and in the background is a man standing by himself in front of a castle, dressed like a character from one of Edgar Allen Poe’s nightmares.

Mind you, I see nothing silly at all about romantic literature or the people who like to read it aloud in public. Different people have different tastes. Some folks like to swim around in muddy water, trying to catch overgrown catfish with their bare hands (it’s called “noodling”), and while it’s interesting to watch on TV, I’m not sure I’d want to try it.

It would have been equally diverting to see how people handled themselves during the poetry readings. One fellow apparently was inspired by the moment and jumped to his feet to do a spontaneous “Roses are red ...” type of thing.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to do what one must do in spite of any fear — or potential for embarrassment — that one may feel.

That’s why it gave me the galloping willies to realize there have been at least two women in my life who would have dragged me to the poetry reading (you should pardon the expression) in a heartbeat.

One in particular would have expected me to get up in front of the Almighty and everyone else to recite a few words that would demonstrate to all present the extent of my affections for her. (The only time she ever wanted to hold hands was in public, where all the world could see us. It was like she was saying, “Look girls! This one’s mine!”)

If I had performed such a poem, it probably would have gone something like this:

Roses are red,

Glass is clear,

I wish I was in The Famous North End Tavern

Instead of here.

And then I’d have been allowed to go home early that night.

Lest you think there’s no romance in my soul, one of my old loves gave me the key to her house when she went to Europe for a couple of weeks.

By the time she came back, I had at least 200 yellow ribbons scattered around her house, inside and out. It took her nearly a month to find them all — and that was only a couple of years ago.

After my father died, I was going through his clothes closet and found a black shirt box behind some pillows on an overhead shelf. Inside the box was a fluffy, gauzy, lacy pink nightgown that I vaguely remembered seeing my mother wear when I was a child.

I have a picture of my parents that was taken in 1940, the day after their wedding. They look like movie stars.

Dad outlived Mom for nearly eight years, and there was never a day he didn’t miss her. I’d look at him now and then and see an expression on his face that I came to recognize and understand. It wasn’t there often, just once in a while, and now that it’s been six years since both of them have been gone, I wear it myself occasionally and consider it a good thing.

My father had to sort through all of my mother’s personal items and dispose of most of them, but the gown was something he chose to keep. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t hung onto a few reminders of dear ones I once thought might become a permanent part of my own life.

Love and romance, and all that goes with them, are some of the rewards we get for being alive and human.

The difference between the two is that one may come and stay for only a moment, but the other might well endure long beyond our brief time on earth.