No need to fake it when love is genuine

Valentine’s Day is next weekend and that’s sure to mean plenty of performance romance and manufactured sentiment.

Please. We seem to have forgotten that love means never having to say you’re zany.

Well, maybe not everyone. Some still remember old-school ways. Check out this note I received in response to a quiz question.

“When I read your column this morning, I immediately recognized the Groundhog mascot as being from ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,’ ” wrote Shirley Jakubowski, a South Hill resident. “The song was ‘Grand Old Ivy.’

“I met my future husband at the hospital in San Francisco where we were both working. I was from Iowa and he was from New York. He asked me to marry him in March of 1963.

“One June 11, to celebrate my birthday, my fiancé took me to the Curran Theater to see the play. Later that evening, he made our engagement official by giving me a beautiful diamond ring.

“Forty seven years later this Iowa farm girl still has her New Yorker, the diamond, and in my archives (scrapbook), the original playbill and program, and ticket stubs from the show, as well as a corsage (pressed and dried) that he gave me that evening.”

Family Phrases Department: In Jennifer Bell-Towne’s family, soy sauce is “soil sauce” because a certain 4-year-old called it that.

Negotiations: Barbara Keene’s son was upset that a tooth left under his pillow overnight was not replaced with cash. So Keene suggested that maybe the Tooth Fairy had run out of change. She urged the lad to try again.

She later heard him tell his brother that he hoped “Dad” would have change that night.

And Michelle Batten’s grandson wrote to the Tooth Fairy requesting additional compensation for “pain and suffering.”

He got it.

Today’s Slice question: Is it hard to have a social life if you have an early bedtime?