Cryptic Love Candies

I CAN'T THINK OF A Valentine's candy without fault. Russell Stover's Marshmallow Hearts are to sticky. Their Peanut Butter Hearts are too messy, and there's something very unromantic about peanut butter anyway. Those tiny cinnamon hearts are just too hot and spicy--too sexy for my mouth.

These are not serious flaws. There is, however, a Valentine's candy which perplexes me more than any other. It is a candy which raises extremely important issues about relationships. It is a candy which has been given to me on this day, year after year, by well-meaning school teachers, relatives, friends and sometimes, boys. But despite people's good intentions, I am always left confused and hurt by Conversation Hearts.

They taste like chalk, but they're mysteriously addictive. When I bought Conversation Hearts at the end of January, my friends exclaimed "Ooh! I love those!" and grabbed handfuls. No one else seemed to be bothered by the candies, or provoked into writing an editorial. But then again, I over-analyze, I need specifics, and I read between the lines.

I REALLY TRIED TO make sense of them this year. Surely the little sayings were printed there for a reason. Surely it all meant something. How could a candy company be so wicked as to knowingly fool around with the sugar-consuming public's emotions? I decided to pay very close attention to the slogans. I was going to figure it all out.

With the help of blockmates and friends, I recorded the saying of hundreds of conversation hearts. "Yes, you can have a conversation heart," I'd say to them as they eyed the bag with longing, "but first you have to tell me what it says. I'm keeping track." The project made the evening of January 28 into an absurd event: as George Bush gave his State of the Union address, a dozen of us sat in my room, eating hearts I took note of the sayings. Amidst bursts of congressional applause, my blockmates would turn to me and murmur in low, sultry voices, LET'S ROCK. SAY YES. DIG ME.

Eventually every bag was empty, and I thought I'd throw up if I had to chew one more grape-flavored LOVER BOY. Now came the challenge. To help myself make sense of all this romantic wisdom, I tried to categorize the sayings. Then, I thought, I would understand not only the candy, but love itself.

Good, Wholesome Traditional Family Values (Yawn). This was a collection of sayings reminiscent of Hallmark cards, 1950's Attractive Family TV sitcoms, mom, apple pie...and State of the Union addresses: LUV YA. NICE GRIL. BE MINE. BE GOOD. BE TRUE. I DO.

Oh Look, A Public Display of Affection/I'm Going to Puke. HONEY. HONEY BUN. LOVE BUG. LOVER BOY. DREAM GIRL. MY MAN.

Groovy Kind of Love. Most likely, these sayings were introduced in the 1960's, when the word "love" was preceded by "free," and things were more...well, groovy: CRAZY. COLL. FOR OUT. HOT MAMA. STAY LOOSE. DIG ME.

No Means No.NOT ME. NO WAY. NOT NOW. STOP. BUZZ OFF.

Finally, there was Blatant Sex category: HOT STUFF. FOXY. LET'S GO WILL YOU.. TRY ME. OH. BOY. And if I employed a little of my imagination, I could I detect within Blatant extra Justify My Love category: HUG ME. COAX ME. KISS ME (that's right, kiss me) LOVE ME (that's right, love me...i wanna be your baby...)

Of course, there were random sayings that I had trouble fitting any where, sayings like SOLID, SMILE and even LOVE. There were other problems with my system. What was I to do when the heart's saying was poorly stamped? Did I assume it was mistake, or consider it an entirely new message? For example, I had a few instances of LOVE BUG that looked more like LOVE BUS, and one especially ambiguous New Age-y heart which simply said. BE Other hearts were eerily blank.

MY PROJECTS WAS completed. But so what? What did I have to show for my research, besides threateningly high plaque levels? Even worse, I was afraid I might have seriously misinterpreted the candy. I called Walter J. Marshall, marketing and special projects manage of the New England Con fectionery Company in Cambridge, where conversation hearts originated.

Marshall told me that at the Cambridge plant, there are about fifty sayings printed on the hearts. Sayings are changed from time to time, he said, but not for any particular reason. And when I asked Marshall whether the sayings were meant to be ambiguous, he chucked a little and told me, "You're trying to put too much into the slogans...People think we stay up all night thinking of the sayings, but we don't."

Marshall must be kind of person who doesn't stay up all night waiting for the phone to ring, either. He probably doesn't stress about relationships, and he probably doesn't even read conversation hearts before popping ten of them into his mouth.

Well, maybe I do some of these things. Maybe I think the sayings are too significant to dismiss as "novelty." I mean, this is intimacy we're dealing with.

I think Marshall recognizes that the words do contain some kind of power. He reeled off some of the sayings for me--"KISS ME...LOVE ME..." paused, and then said something under his breath about how this phone call could get him arrested. The language of love is indeed risky, and on candy it can be downright dangerous. Maybe it's time to update the slogans. Marshall tells me that the candies were invented sometime around World War I. If any of the sayings in the current series are left over from that era--well, that was a while ago. It might be time to add more contemporary sayings that I at least recognize: THE "C" WORD. WE NEED TO TALK. LET'S JUST BE FRIENDS. DO ME. SAFE SEX.

I GUESS I probably to attach to much meaning to a piece of sugar. I must be emotionally scarred from an incident in junior high, when the future high school quarter back raced down the hall, pursued by his rowdy friends. As he passed me at my locker, he thrust a conversation heart down the back of my shirt. He kept running. I forget what the heart said, but I was intrigued. Over the next few days, I waited for some kind of follow-up, some explanation, some profession of love. Nothing happened.

Basically, my relationship with conversation hearts has brought me nothing but grief. And so I'm breaking it off. It's over. There are other fish in the sea; other candies at CVS. I don't care if the hearts are sodium and fat free. I don't care if the rest of the world enjoys the candy for pure taste. I've tried to make this thing work, and it hasn't. I am afraid of them, I'm sick of them, and from this day forward, I vow to abstain from all romantic exchange stamped on sugar. DIG ME?