Scribble Picnic and Letters

With another cold upon me, no doubt from all the travels, I decided to redraw the redhead from a few weeks ago, imagining her this time opening up an envelope and discovering a lil' love note inside.

This picture actually reminds me of the one and only time I ever gave a Valentine card to someone (before adulthood, that is). I quickly learned, however, that this was not copacetic! In fact, not only that, it turned out I was the only one in our little village school who had sent such a card to anyone and to make matters worse, it was to the Headmaster's daughter, no less!

That morning I had carefully drawn a heart on a piece of paper, folded it and declared my 7-year old admiration and "love" to her. While unable to remember now the exact words, I do recall taking my time to write it legibly enough, very much feeling that romantic stir within my buoyant boyish heart whilst scrawling out my note in red crayon. I just wanted her to know that I thought she was sweet, kind-hearted and pretty, to boot... and, of course, signed it with love. Oh dear me.

Waking up a bit earlier, I rushed across the village green to the school, hoping to be the first one in class so to simply drop the note onto this girl's desk and she would never know who sent it. Trouble was, while Catherine White was not there, other school kids were! Quickly, I determined to non-challantly slip the note into her desk while no one was looking. Of course, as soon as the desk table lifted, it creaked, and the girl who sat next to her (who happened to also be her best friend) inquired as to what was I doing? Telling her it was just a little secret and nothing more was not good enough for her though. Rushing over and grabbing it out of the desk, she proceeded to read it aloud to all the other girls there with everyone having a good laugh, pointing their fingers at me, etc. Ha-ha, at this point, I wasn't so put off by the embarrassment as much as distinctly fearing expulsion from the school by her father and then what would my mother do? We had only recently moved to Norfolk (from London) and there were no other schools around in this little village of Briston!

All day long, I tried to avoid the headmaster and just waited for him to call out, "MacVean, come here at once!" Thankfully, nothing happened and later that week I think chicken pox broke out or something so people had other things to worry about. A few weeks later, I do recall that when the boys would try to round up the girls as "prisoners," pulling their hair and so on, it was always me who protested treating them as such and was very much the egalitarian. Catherine would then sometimes wryly smile at me for my chivalry, I suppose, nothing more. :)

OK, well, with that lil' diddly out of the way, it's time to discover what the rest of you conjured up with your picnic mail or letters....