My aunt sent me a box of Valentines including bags of conversation hearts.  I've gotten a huge kick out of these.  Aside from the fact that I love bad holiday candy, it was great fun watching Bulgarians read the messages on these candies for the first time.

If you're American, you know the drill.  The little heart shaped candies in pastel colors say things like: love you, you flirt, call me, awesome, hug me, URA 10, kiss me and so on. Sure the messages are a little cheesy but that's half of the fun.  It's like a whole box of fortune cookies--only you don't have to eat the entire cookie to find out what your fortune is. They are two word messages.

But it turns out that the conversation hearts left some of the people I shared the candy with confused.  They could read the message and they knew the words but what the heart was telling them still wasn't clear. It was messages like: dear one, get ready, sun shine, lover boy, sweetie pie, cloud nine, sweet talk and my girl that resulted in people holding their candy, looking at me, looking at their candy and then giving me some face that said: huna?   <!--more-->

Most of the adults got a good laugh out of it after a little explanation.  The kids on the other hand (the ones I thought would like it the most) were pretty blase about the whole thing.  A few of them giggled but most of them looked at the candy, didn't understand what their candy was saying and then ate it rather than ask me what it meant.

On some level, I get it.  These students see two or maybe three words on a candy and they don't know what it means.  They've been doing a lot harder work in class so it's probably disheartening to see something like this and know what the words mean but not "get it."  Also, problematic is the fact that the candy hearts contain a lot of idioms, pet names and puns that native speakers of English would be familiar with but that non-natives might not be familiar with ("get real" for example).

On another level, I don't get it.  I am the girl who gets a box of conversation hearts and then I dump them all out on the table to see what all of the candies say.  I want to read them, line them up and laugh at them all collectively before I eat them. I love words and word play. I also love the colors pink, purple, green and yellow. This means that for me, these candies are a lot of fun.

Luckily for me, most of my friends understood this and encouraged my love of these little heart candies.

This leaves me with two final remarks--first, Sofia, Bulgaria may not be the next big market for conversation hearts and second, Necco candy people, you need to make sure that you get your conversation heart typewriter lined up on the candies better next year--lots of your candy was missing a message or the message was smudged or only half of the message was on the heart.