Next Tuesday is Valentine’s Day. I’m thinking about ‘puppy love’ that clumsy, short-lived, romantic affection felt by children or adolescents. I remember the night before our first-grade Valentine party at Rockton Grade School. I was addressing cards for my classmates. I selected a special one and told Mom, “This one’s for Bing.”
She said a firm, “No.”
I didn’t ask why and finished.
Bing, my first boyfriend, was a blond, second grader. I’d met him while riding a yellow bus with the other farm kids who lived along Highway 75 west of the village. During the morning and afternoon trips, we sat together on a bench seat. Our classrooms, which each contained about thirty pupils, were across the hall from one another. Our teachers often brought their students together. March first, I left Bing behind when our family moved to a farm southeast of Durand.
I continued at Dobson country school with a total enrollment of ten students in various grades. Frankie became my new boyfriend. The ‘big girls’, including his twin sisters, teased us about our romance. Soon they filled recess times by planning and executing our ‘wedding’.
When I was in fourth grade, we moved to a farm northwest of Durand. I increased the enrollment at Putnam country school to nine. I continued to find new boyfriends in different places.
For junior high and high school, I rode a yellow bus to Durand. During the summer when I was a fourteen, schoolmate Kenny asked me to ride on a Ferris wheel. That encounter turned into real love with an actual wedding.
Eight years ago, I saw in the news that the fellow that was nicknamed Bing fell into a bin of shelled corn. His grandson and an emergency crew saved his life. Seventy years later, he was still farming in the same area. I wonder if he remembers me.
Who was your first puppy love?