DAD’S EYE VIEW Another Swain-Free Valentine’s Day

BY RICK EPSTEIN

ANOTHER

AND the only heartshaped box of chocolates that’ll be coming into this house will be the one I buy for my wife. With three lovely daughters (ages 3, 6 and 10), I can’t help but wonder how long our luck will hold. It all starts so much sooner than it ought to.

When our oldest was 7, a tall boy named Alexander used to bewilder Marie by picking flowers for her. He confided to my wife, “I like Marie. A lot!” But he moved away, and we’ve been swain-free ever since. Now love is in the air once more.

The oldest kid in our neighborhood, Billy, is 12. And Sally, our 6-year-old, keeps me up to date on Billy’s early dealings with members of the opposing sex, including the seventh-grade girl who sometimes babysits our kids after school. “Billy was going with Rachel,” reports Sally, “But then Rachel dumped him.”

“You know, it sounds like you’re talking about a load of garbage and not a human being,” I said, speaking as one who’s been discarded more times than I’d care to enumerate. “Why did Rachel break up with him?”

“Heather talked her into it, so Rachel would hang around with her instead of Billy,” Sally said. Heather’s part in it was no surprise. She is a fifth-grader who lives on our street. She is full of intrigues and counts it a day wasted when she hasn’t added to world’s sum of misery – and Billy’s unhappiness is her special joy.

Sally went on to say that heartbroken Billy had gone out onto his porch roof and threatened to jump. “And did he jump?” I asked. “Sure,” she said, “But he didn’t get hurt. He does it all the time, but usually it’s for fun and not for love.” “Does all this go on while Rachel is supposed to be babysitting you?” I asked.

“Sure,” she said. What more could a seventh-grader want? Ten bucks an hour, unlimited Diet Coke, plus the Lover’s Leap Thrill Show. Sally further alleged that Heather has a boyfriend, but is looking to dump him and upgrade.

Apparently, from 3 to 6 p.m. on weekdays, when these kids should’ve been indoors playing violent video games or plagiarizing Wikipedia, they are out on the street reveling in some kind of hormonal happy hour in which they hack away at each other’s emotions like drunks with meat-axes until they’re called in to supper.

I’m forced to remember my first love. I was a fourth-grader in love with a fifth-grade enchantress named Jeanette Scott. Although she was extremely uninterested, I’d walk her home from the bus stop every day. Jeanette’s main after-school activity was jumping-rope, so I joined in to be with her. Sure, prizefighters jump rope, but they don’t do it with two girls turning it for them and chanting, “C my name is Clara, and my husband’s name is Clyde. We live in Cleveland and we sell cookie cutters.” My campaign was not advanced.

According to Greek legend, sirens were sea nymphs whose seductive song would lure sailors to their deaths on coastal rocks. Whenever we’d drive past the Scotts’ house, my dad would put his hand to his ear and say, “I can hear the siren song.” (Dad had more ways to warn of treachery and disaster than Crayola has crayons.)

One day on the school bus, Jeanette’s brother turned around and spat copiously in my eye. We’d been friends, and the oyster seemed to come out of a clear sky. He made no explanation, but I took it as a sign of brotherly disapproval.

A week later, at the rollerskating rink, Jeanette laid bare her feelings for me. I had skated to the sidelines to chat with her, when, without preamble, she coolly poured a cup of well-iced Dr. Pepper over my head. Her friends laughed. The soda-pop, flavored with melted hair product, was bitter in my mouth as I skated away, a tragic figure, vowing henceforth I would love more carefully or not at all.

It’s an ugly business, this boy-girl stuff, and the longer it can be postponed, the better for everyone.

A few weeks ago, fourth-grade Marie made a remark I didn’t like: “Y’know, Dad, some of the boys in my class are starting to act like human beings.”

“Don’t be fooled,” I said. “They’re just evolving into another kind of animal – the kind that wants to follow you home.” I hoped to sound a note of warning, but I’m afraid it won’t be long before the skies around here will be fairly black with heartbroken suitors flinging themselves off low roofs. ✦