VALENTINES DAY, 1980

Here's what I mean when I say we live in our imaginations:

It was Valentines Day, 1980. I was in Mr. Benson's 6th grade class.

And so was Amber. 

She was sweet and pretty and had straight blond hair reaching half way down her back.

Unfortunately, she was about as shy and quiet as I was. 

My crush on her was top secret. 

The exchange of Valentines made me super nervous and just a little hopeful. Each student had decorated a shoebox and cut a slit in the top. There was a party at the end of the day and we each got to drop our little platonic store-bought slips of paper into our classmates' boxes.

At my first opportunity, I opened my box and began to sort through the notes, looking for the only one that mattered.

When I finally came across it, my heart leapt. There was nothing special about it. But it had her name on it. And my name - written by her own hand.

I set it carefully aside and, with much less interest, continued through the remaining Valentines until I came across a true curiosity: A second Valentine from Amber.

Again, "To Steve. From Amber."

My first thought was: "She's sending me a sign! She likes me twice as much as she likes anyone else in the class!"

That euphoria lasted maybe 30 seconds. 

It was promptly replaced by its opposite: "She gave me two by mistake. She doesn't even know my name enough to have noticed she had already written it once before! She doesn't know I exist!"

My point is this: To this day, I do not know the reality of why I received two Valentines from Amber or whether or not it meant a thing. 

But I was crushed - my imagination devised its own reality. And it crushed me. 

For better or for worse, we humans live in our imaginations.