As I was tossing out the now dessicated flowers Lin gave me for Valentine’s Day, I started thinking about high school. Every year one of the clubs on campus, the Future Teachers of America, sold carnations to be delivered at school on Valentine’s Day. My geeky friends and I dreaded the whole build-up to that event. We were a group of really nerdy chicks … too fat, too thin, too acne-prone, too smart, too socially inept, too whatever to be “popular” or to even have a boyfriend. The whole carnation situation seemed set to bring that home in a painful way.

Even worse than having hundreds of girls running around campus with arm-loads of flowers on Valentine’s day itself was the tradition of putting up little hearts on the main building’s wall with recipients’ names on them. That wall was very busy the week before February 14th. Even those of us who were embarrassed to look and see if our name was on the wall checked it out when no one was looking … a benefit we had by being involved in activities that left us alone in the building after school hours. Being a trustworthy geek has its benefits.

My freshman year, we all got one single carnation … anonymously sent. I never knew who sent me mine, but I do know who bought the others for my friends. I did. I didn’t want them to hurt, and I loved them so much. I wanted them to have some fun, and if they ever suspected it was me that did it, they never let on, and I spent that day chattering with them about who could have sent them. It made me happy to see them so happy … and all it cost was a week’s worth of lunch money.

The next year, even though by then my friends had no doubts that it had been me that had sent them those flowers, I continued the new tradition and bought them all anonymous carnations the first day they went on sale. Of course, when their names showed up on that wall, they knew it was from me, but we played the game anyway in some sort of attempt to fit in and not feel quite so left out of the more social aspects of being a teenager. But something unexpected happened that year. A few days before Valentine’s Day, one of my friends came running to me excitedly that I really needed to go look at the wall. So in broad daylight in the middle of the school day, I did something I thought I would never do. I stood in a crowd of other giggling teenagers and looked at the wall to find my name.

As I scanned all those little pieces of pink construction paper, there was my name. There was my name again … and again … and again … seven little pink hearts were there on the wall with my name on them. That afternoon during lunch, I told my friends to please just tell me if they had done that, otherwise, it was going to drive me insane. Who, other than them, would buy me flowers? They swore they had only bought me one, because they didn’t want me to be the only one of us to not get at least one. They had no idea where the others may have come from, and after much back and forth, I believed them. They really didn’t know. They did admit to being a little jealous, but they were as excited as I was to see what names, if any, might appear as the giver on the slips of paper that would come with those flowers.

I didn’t check the wall again. I did watch everyone I knew for signs that maybe they had been one of the people who had bought me a carnation. I obsessed on it, in fact. I couldn’t imagine anyone other than my few dear friends bothering to think of me in that way. Eventually, I realized I would just have to wait until the 14th to have the mystery solved.

When that morning arrived, I was out of bed and in the car in record time to get to school. Even my parents noticed and thought it odd. I was always one of those “just five more minutes” kids who had trouble getting out of bed and on my way to school (I loved school but hated mornings). I remember my dad asking me why today of all days I was so eager for the school day to begin. “Because I’m getting flowers!” He rolled his eyes and laughed.

First and second periods went so slowly. They wouldn’t start handing out the flowers until after study break, and I was on pins and needles waiting impatiently … as were all the other people who knew they had some to expect. Eventually flowers started appearing here and there, and I got a few in one period, a few in another, and then even more right after band. In all, I received a perfect dozen carnations, and every last one of them was anonymous. It made me want to pull my hair out!

I tried my best to figure out who any of them had come from, even going so far as to attempt to bribe one of the club members for the information, but no one was going to either confess or break their little FTA oath of secrecy. “If we started telling people who bought flowers for who, no one would buy them anymore.” How maddening! Realizing I was never going to find out who the buyer(s) were, I finally gave up and spent the rest of the day giggling quietly to myself that someone or several someones out there among my classmates and teachers had thought enough of me to send me flowers on Valentine’s Day. As silly as it sounds, it made me feel warm and loved, even if it did make me a little crazy.

This strange trend of me getting flowers anonymously continued at Homecoming when I found myself with a chest-full of giant mums covered with ribbons, bows, bells and all manner of gaudy decorations in black, white and red … and it didn’t stop that year. Every year I received more flowers for both occasions, until my senior year when I received so many carnations I couldn’t carry them to class with me and so many mums I couldn’t wear them all … and aside from the very few who I knew who bought them … a few came with names (my parents, a favorite teacher, an out-of-town friend) and a few people fessed up (long after the fact) … the rest of them were sent anonymously. It’s the greatest mystery of my high school years. I never did find out where the rest of them came from. No one confessed. No one divulged super-secret FTA information. It has poked at my mind many times over the years. I still want to know!

I guess I’ll never know, and I can live with that. The anonymous flowers I got in high school are one of the few good memories I have of my time at FHS. They made me feel special, and they made me feel like even though I could count my close friends on one hand, I wasn’t quite the social freak I thought I was. They made me feel loved and cared about. I’d like to say thank you to whoever sent them … all those anonymous people from so long ago. You made my geeky little life more bearable, and you made me feel like I belonged. Thank you so much for that.