L is for Love and Lovies

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

In "C is for Communication, 70s Style" I explained how my friends and I wrote and passed notes to each other at school. The notes always closed with "Love" or "Love ya" or something else of the sort, and that's where someone, somewhere, got creative and started closing notes with the overly cute "Love and Lollipops," which eventually was shortened to "Love and Lollies." My very good friend Jan and I frequently used the "Love and Lollies" closing on notes to each other.

Jan and I were in class together from 2nd grade all the way through college, and we are still friends. She was that person I could tell anything to, because she never judged. We lived two blocks from each other until my family moved to a new neighborhood after I finished 6th grade, but as we only moved a mile and a half away, it was pretty easy for me to hop on my bike and ride over to her house, where we would partake in one of our favorite things to do: ride together up to A&W and get root beer floats and french fries (the statute of limitations hasn't run yet on some of our other activities from when we were in high school and college, so those shall not be mentioned at this writing, if ever). 

One day while we were in high school, Jan was writing me a note during class. She sat next to a boy named Rick Lamar, and as she was writing, he was leaning over and reading what she wrote. When she got to the saccharine "Love and Lollies" closing, he said, "Love and LOVIES?!" What's THAT supposed to mean?  

"It doesn't say 'love and lovies'! It says 'love and LOLLIES," she explained, then she added a footnote to my note along the lines of "that moron thought it said 'Love and Lovies.'"

From that moment on, Jan and I signed all notes and other correspondence to each other by closing with "Love and Lovies" which then evolved to "Love and Rick Lamar" and finally to "Love and RL." 

Those notes were from maybe 1976.

These are Facebook posts from the past year:

I'm positive Rick has no idea the legacy he created when he was being nosy that day over 46 years ago, but we will never forget.

Me and Jan, college graduation, 1982

Out on the town, 2022