Conversations of the Heart

A long, long time ago, I had this dream of Jake Ryan pulling up outside my house, in his cherry red Porsche, and rescuing me from my life.  Sitting on top of the dining room table to eat birthday cake was optional, but the Thompson Twins would definitely be playing the background. Sigh!  "If You Were Here".  Jake was the original teenage dream. 

 And sure, lots of other boys earned my affection in the years since Sixteen Candles, but there’s just something about Jake Ryan that still gives my estrogen a massive tweak.  Maybe it's that he can actually rock a sweater vest.  Or that he's just so damn hot.  It doesn't matter, the teenager in me will keep him as my perpetual valentine. 

So far as I can see, there are only two good things about Valentine’s Day:

1. Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown – something about poor Linus cursing Elizabeth Barrett Browning just cracks me up.
2. Conversation Hearts.  I’d never eat plain old Necco wafers because to be perfectly honest, they pretty much taste like crap.  But shape them in hearts and slap a catchy phrase on them and suddenly, every February, it’s like these candies actually taste good.  Though the messages have gotten a little funky over the year.  

I’m fan of the classics – “Kiss Me” and “Be Mine”.  But new phrases that showed up this year, specifically “Just One” and “Dare You” just confuse me. 

“Just One” what?  One candy?  Not going to happen.  I’ll eat them until my stomach aches of ulcers.  One kiss?  Not going to work either.  I’m greedy that way. One drink?  Easier said than done sometimes.  One love?  Well, maybe in the movies.  I’m not advocating a life of slutdom, but if we all stuck with the first person we fell in love with (or at least what we thought was love at the time), well, I’d either be stalking poor Jake Ryan (which I guess I kind of am, but I swear I know he's not real) or the upperclassman I was lusting in high school (sorry, dude for all that ogling in the hallways on my way to Social Studies). 

As for “Dare You”, well dare you to what?  I dare you to love me.  Ouch!  I dare you to eat this candy?  Well, close up they do look a little sketchy.  Though people often option for the dare over the truth, so maybe the people at Necco are onto something. Honesty has no place on a day with the initials "VD".  Just saying.

And then there’s the “You Rock” heart.   And sometimes the “R” isn’t so clear so it actually looks more like the kind of candy message you’d give the a-hole that dumped you.  Now a box of Convo Hearts to give to people who broke your heart….now those would be fun to make!

Alas, I don’t want to be mistaken for a bitter chick, just because it’s nonsense commercial holiday and I happen to be single this year.  Truth be told I’d rather get flowers (and something more creative than red roses, please) on April 6^th.  It’s my half birthday.  So if I can meet a boy who remembers that, well, I’ll be sure the candy heart you get is a “You Rock”!

As for love, it can be a wonderfully, amazing, painful, scary, worth-taking-the-leap-of-faith-for thing.  And I’m very lucky and very grateful to have so much love in my life.  No sarcasm.  No snarky remarks.  At the end of the day, I’m a romantic at heart.  Which is probably why a line from an episode of Castle struck a chord with me.  Castle asks Beckett how she knows when she’s in love and she replies, “All the songs make sense.”  I couldn’t agree more.

So today, I respectfully turn it over to a song that always makes sense to me.  I tip my hat to the original, but sometimes the cover just kicks more ass.  “You and me babe, how about it?”