Happy Valentine’s Day!

In elementary school, we never had a Valentine in the romantical sense, but an equal opportunity Valentine’s Day card policy ensured that we always ended up with plenty of bizarre Valentine’s Day cards in the 80s, and ours never seemed to make as much sense as “I choo-choo-choose you” or “Let’s bee friends”. Instead, we got Beestur suggesting that we “‘skip’ the small talk” (What does that mean, exactly? Does he want to make small talk with us while he’s skipping? We don’t want to consider the disturbing implications of Beestur on a Valentine’s Day card. And then there’s Lady Lovelilocks, a character whose goodness is entirely tied up in her flowing blonde hair. (Lady Lovelilocks did quite a number on this young brunette’s self esteem, let us tell you.)

We understand that Valentine’s Day cards are no better today. Boys can buy hockey or Transformers’-themed valentines, and the shelves of Shoppers Drug Mart are always overflowing with obnoxious Dora the Explorer cards bearing uninspired or just downright baffling punny pleas for a Valentine.

No wonder romantic comedies are always so bad.

Monetary value: $0.00, unless Michael H. grew up to be a movie star

Nostalgic value: Mildly amusing in that “Oh yeah, My Pet Monster” way…man that show was weird. And Lady Lovelilocks? Where the only dark-haired character was evil? Thanks, asshole hairist toymakers.

Disposal status: recycling bin

The Camp Oscar

Now, don’t get too excited. We know, this looks so very much like the real thing, but it is actually just made of plastic and from the now defunct Class Act Drama Camp, locale of several excruciating weeks of adolescent horror. We were never exactly a camp person, what with our aversion to “talking to people” and “being outside” and “doing anything besides hide in our room and read.” We were especially not outdoorsy, but we did like drama (in all senses of the word, if we’re being honest), so when one of our neighbours told us about this summer drama camp where you slept indoors, ate indoors, and mostly sang songs from musicals, we were intrigued. Our younger sisters, who happily spent their summers in tents at horseback riding camp, made fun of us for going to “hotel camp”, as though that were a bad thing.

Perhaps “horror” is a tad melodramatic. Hotel Camp was fine, really. It was a revelation to meet other people our age who had not only heard of Stephen Sondheim, but who could sing along when we launched into a rendition of Into the Woods. There are certainly other stories to be told of Hotel Camp (it was a strange fly-by-night sort of organization, a Christopher Guest movie waiting to happen), but this is fake Oscar represents a happy triumph.

Our favourite camp activity by far was Theatresports, which is a drama dork way of saying competitive improv games. Up until Hotel Camp, we were thought of more as funny peculiar than funny haha, so you can imagine our delight when people laughed (appreciatively, mind you, not mockingly) at our improvised antics. Of course, off stage we were still funny peculiar, even at a camp full of drama dorks, but still. Baby steps.

In fact, we enjoyed our foray into improv so much that after camp was over, we started taking classes at Second City, where we were part of the short-lived but legendary (in our own minds, at least) teen improv group the Mystic Muffins. (Ok, it was really just our class. But still! We opened for real professional comics one time!)

Monetary value: Tony? Franka? Are you putting together a Class Act hall of fame?

Nostalgic value: We don’t really miss being called Crate Girl (don’t ask). But mostly camp was fun, sort of.

Disposal status: Our community theatre organizer mother kept it for its future potential as a prop.

The Desktop Mini-Drawers

True, this little set of drawers isn’t much to look at. It was probably meant to organize nails or something. But we found tiny little drawers irresistible and filled them with all manner of nonsense, from foreign coinage to embroidery floss. And this little set of drawers made (we thought) the perfect cashbox, should we ever need one.

We did, as it turned out. We fancied ourself a charitable youth, and one afternoon when we were about 11, we set up shop – complete with cashbox – on our sidewalk, selling lemonade, cookies, and homemade worry dolls to passersby, assuring everyone that the proceeds would go directly to charity. We failed to specify which charity, exactly, but we were pretty cute with our puffy hair, big glasses, Blue Jays cap, and oversized sweatshirt (plus, most of the passersby were neighbours and friends of our parents), so we managed to make a whopping $25.

But we couldn’t decide where to send it, and while we were too young to have our chequebook, we were old enough to realize that you shouldn’t send cash through the mail, especially when most of it is loonies and quarters. We fretted for a couple of days, and then put the cashbox (cash still within) in our room, where we felt a surge of guilt every time we caught a glimpse of that stack of loonies and wad of two-dollar bills.

And thus it was for the better part of two decades, until we unearthed this now-worthless stack of two-dollar bills and still spendable stack of loonies. Naturally, being the sap that we are, we felt that knee-jerk surge of guilt…until we realized (a) that we have paid our self-enforced debt of $25 to whatever charity several times over and (b) we hadn’t made it to the bank machine like we meant to that day and needed those 13 loonies for beer money. Then we emptied out the rest of the drawers (and found the Florida Taiwan orange!) and went to the bar.

Monetary value: $2. It would hold a lot of nails, if you needed that sort of thing. But it’s kind of grody from so many years in the basement.

Nostalgic value: Meh. We’re still concerned that we hoodwinked everyone nice enough to pay us $.50 for a cup of lemonade. In 1993 that was a lot of money!

Disposal status: Drawer box – giveaway. Cash – spent at bar. Except for the two-dollar bills. We’re pretty sure those are worthless now.