Broke Girls ’

Valentine’s Day with a Disney focus

Ihave heard and actually have been one of those people who decried the “everybody gets a trophy” mentality. I mean, life just ain’t like that. I’m writing this the Friday before Super Bowl Sunday so I don’t know who is now the Super Bowl champion, but what I do know is that the NFL didn’t decide to give the loser an identical Lombardi award.

Now some may say that the “everybody gets a trophy” thing is a new phenomenon, but I have evidence to the contrary: Valentine’s Day back when I was a kid.

Here’s how it went down: You bought a box of Valentine’s cards and then were forced to give one to every single kid in the class. That bully, Rick Moriarity, who punched me in the stomach near the monkey bars at recess? He gets a valentine. Susan Yak, who I have had a crush on since first grade? She gets a valentine. The new kid whose name I can’t remember who wears pants that are flooding and always smells like peanut butter? He gets a valentine.

I was like a prepubescent Oprah Winfrey: “You get a valentine! You get a valentine! You get a valentine! Everybody gets a valentine!”

It was ludicrous.

Still, it messed with my head when I got one from a girl I had a crush on (Susan Yak was just one of a long stream of girls I never, ever talked to but my eyes adored. So close, so close and yet so far). What I mean is, if they gave me a generic drugstore valentine, that was one thing. But if I got one that featured a Walt Disney character, well now, that was something altogether different.

Those Disney cards were the gold standard and you didn’t give those to just anybody, did you? Well, in a word, yes. In the I Grew Up in Fairfield Too Facebook group, locals shared Tony Wade about Valentine’s Days The last laugh of their childhoods:

Michelle Ryan

Myers: This year my granddaughter’s fourth-grade class has the option to do it the way we did it back in the day. She opted out. She said, “It’s not like

I love everyone in my class,

Grandma. I mean I like them, but not enough to give them a love card.” Cynthia Simpson: That was actually a good idea. When we didn’t do it that way, I got maybe two. Linda Kelley: We had it that you signed a card, but didn’t address it. You could make out one for the whole class. The teacher put them all in a box and we had a Valentine’s parade where we just stuck our hand in and picked out a card. It was fun seeing whose you got and how many from the same person. I remember it as just being fun. Chuck Davis: In elementary school we had to give cards to everyone in class, but I spent a lot of time going through the box of cards to find just the right ones for the girls I liked. Then I would spend more time carefully selecting the heart candies with the words I wanted them to read. All the rest just went willy-nilly into the envelopes. I was very clever, maybe a little too clever because it never worked! And still does not to this day. I need to up my game.

Maybe some Haiku. . . . I came across a 1965 ad from

Ragle’s Pharmacy which used to be located downtown at

Courtesy illustration Tony Wade as a Sith Lord, his wife Beth as a Jedi Knight and their pooch Chunky Tiberius Wade as a Jedi Master in the Valentine’s Day art Tony had made for Beth.

932 Texas St., which I thought at a quick glance was about Valentine’s Day. It was not. The two big letters highlighted “VD” referred to . . . well, venereal disease. Sorry for taking this column in an awkward direction just now.

Anyway, I know many people get stressed about Valentine’s Day. Single people, couples, married folks: It can be viewed like some sort of test of love or something. It has never been that way for me personally. I usually get my wife Beth a card and we go out to eat. However, a couple of years ago we decided, just for us, to not use food as celebration anymore.

I also did not get her a card this year (generic or Disney), much less jewelry or anything like that.

My gift mixed old school with our shared pop culture geekiness. Make Me Jedi, a company that creates personalized works of art, lured me in with their unique and fun products. Well, that and their 50% off Valentine’s Day deal.

Our artwork features me as a Sith Lord (Raiders fans are all Sith Lords), Beth as a Jedi and our pooch Chunky Tiberius Wade as a Jedi Master about to put a rebel beat down on someone.

Oh, and I just remembered that Star Wars is owned by Disney now so it ties back to our childhood nicely. I’m not giving one to anybody else, though.

Fairfield freelance humor columnist and accidental local historian Tony Wade writes two weekly columns: “The Last Laugh” on Mondays and “Back in the Day” on Fridays, although sometimes he mixes things around to suit his purposes, like he did with this column. Wade is also the author of The History Press book “Growing Up In Fairfield, California.”

BRIGHT spot

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