amos: the story of st valentine

Editor’s note: Amos is a church mouse, who types by hopping on the computer keyboard, but he can’t operate the capital shift keys, and he shuns punctuation marks – except dashes and hyphens.

the story of st valentine

boss i realize that it will

soon be valentine s day

and the other day i wanted

to find out more about that

weird holiday and why people

do such strange things

in such peculiar ways

i ran across a couple of

old discarded encyclopedias

but they only confused me

most people believe that

valentine s day was

connected to a saint by

that same name

but boss history records

only two saints by that

name and both had their

heads chopped off

to me that sounds like an

awful sad love story - and

has almost nothing to do

with valentine cards red

hearts wild roses or

chocolate-covered cherries

so boss i decided to hunt

up willifred the white rat -

you remember willifred boss -

he was a mad scientist s

experimental mouse before

his conversion - anyway he

invented a miniature time

machine for the church pew

underworld - he calls it the

tiny time traveler and it

fits into any regular model

motorized matchbox such as

my 57 cheeserolet

at any rate boss i jumped into

willifred s tiny time traveler

and went searching through time

for that shadowy st valentine

i landed somewhere in the late

200s smack dab in the catacombs

under the city of rome

it wasn t long before i found

some other mousy christians

like me except they were

wearing cheesecloth togas

hey have you guys seen

st valentine says me

keep it down you clown

yelled a burly roman rat with

the face of an ungodly bat

i tell you boss he didn t look

much like a christian to me

so i decided to rephrase my

question a little more delicately

i d like to meet that

wonderful saint of god who s

called valentine says me can you

direct me to his vicinity

sure says he you can find

him in that sanctuary and he

pointed to a little grotto

transformed into a chapel

he s conducting one of a dozen

wedding ceremonies says

he to me secretly

why are you whispering says me

because his joy is the

emperor s misery says he

why - what do you mean

says me

the emperor claudius the cat

says single mice and rats

make the best army cadets

so nobody can marry says he

that s my decree

but dear valentine that priest

so kind disobeys the emperor s

demand and marries

sweethearts throughout the

land - so love doth grow

in the catacombs below

boss remembering that

valentine was beheaded for

his bravery calls to mind that

verse that says -

no greater love is there than

this that one lay down his

life for his friends

amos