Fritzen was the German name–
“Fritz” was what he called himself.
I was just the high school boy
hired to drive my rose-red car:
deliver Flowers by Fritz.

At the University,
back in 1959,
girls in the sororities
(yes, then they were all called “girls”)
received flowers from their “boys.”

Actually they smiled at me,
then they read the little card–
usually they smiled again.
If they did not like the name,
I thought, “humiliation.”

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, May 111, 2014