This I wrote in a column years ago.

“This is a true story. One day at recess in the school yard at St. Mary and Joseph Catholic School, I fell down and seriously skinned my knee. Everyone laughed and ran off, except for Mary Lister. Mary came over and pulled her luncheon dessert from a brown paper bag and handed me my first ever Twinkie. I fell in love that day with Mary and with Twinkies. Thank you, Mary.”

Mary, who gave me that first Twinkie, went on to hold my heart in her Twinkie-smeared hand up to the sixth grade. She also gave me my first Valentine, which I still have in my first scrapbook.

I’ve written about this before, and I can’t find it in my book, but there it is in your hearts — if you still are my reader.

I think about that Valentine and Mary on that day each year.

Mary and I were a couple of years apart, and never “sweethearts,” just close friends after that day.

Then this old, warm and crazy story began to worm its way into my space.

One warm day in 1951, home on my first leave from the Air Force, at 18 years of age, I visited my beloved old Melba Movie Theatre on Grand Avenue for a nostalgic box of popcorn.

As I was about to leave, a young girl entered, stopped dead, and gasped: “Jerry! Jerry Devine?”

It was the Mary Lister of the first Valentine fame with a Band-Aid on her nose.

There we stood, the boy of the horrible skinned knee and the girl of the first Valentine.

The conversation, barely remembered from years ago, went something like this:

“You skinned your nose.”

“And you’re in a uniform.”

We shared a fountain Coke and said goodbye and promised to write.

Barely a block away, she shouted and ran back. “How long are you home?”

It was my last leave before going overseas, and I probably said, “About a month.”

“Would you like to be my prom date?”

“Don’t you have a date?”

“He’s a nerd. Can you wear your uniform?”

All the details of that encounter, the corsage, the cab, the nervous stomach, fell into place, and Mary Lister of the stale Twinkie and the boy with the skinned knee lit up her prom.

Over the years I moved from St. Louis to Waukegan, Illinois; to Bellevue, Washington; Chicago to Boston; New York to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles; and to your front door right here in Waterville without ever seeing Mary Lister again.

From that schoolyard where I survived the tragic skinned knee and was gifted my first Twinkie, I wandered through one war and years of an acting career and dozens of jobs across America.

It’s comforting to know that, through each Valentine’s Day sharing I shared with others, I’m still with She.

I tried to find my old friend and hasty prom date of that decade, to no avail.

Women marry and change their names and lives and eventually pass away.

But some memories survive. Happy Valentine’s Day, Mary.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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