Origins

When I was in junior high back in Southern California, way back in the 70's (late 70's!) we had a little humiliating something called "secret admirer days".  This was a handy and tangible way for you, and all that knew you, to gauge how popular you were or weren't.  It involved notes and little candies or balloons that would be delivered to you in whatever class you were in 6th period.  It usually coincided with a holiday, like Valentine's Day.  In would come a group of perfect girls from the cheerleading squad carrying armloads of ammunition with which to destroy our self-worth.  We would all sit there in our desks trying not to look to hopeful, trying to look like we didn't give a Hoover Dam whether we got a secret admirer gift or not. 

Let me just be clear here,  I was not popular.  I was fine.  I had lots of friends, most of whom were Mormon like me, my family didn't have much money, my Dad was weird, I was shy, I was a "goody-good" (which is an actual 70's term).  I wouldn't usually get shut out, but I wasn't floating away with armloads of secret admirer balloon admiration either.  My secret admirers weren't really very secret either, my friends and I would send them to each other as part of a pact to not look too pathetic.  Then, about half way through my 7th grade year I started receiving actual secret admirer cards.  They would be signed from "a little brown wren".  Now the cleverness of this nomenclature was not lost on me, my name was Renae Brown...get it...Brown Wren?  This made the mystery ever so much sweeter, I was sure that I was receiving these cards from the most clever, most foxiest and poetic boy at school.  I knew it wasn't from my Mom because my Mom seemed barely aware she even had children who attended school.  We were kind of left to take care of everything "schooly" on our own.  Which, by the way, is a terrible strategy.  So who?  A teacher...that would be so creepy.  None of my friends fessed up to it.  Bottom line is that I never figured it out.  I continued to receive them every secret admirer day for the whole 3 years I was in junior high.  Never freakin' figured out who it was.  I choose to believe in the foxy poet theory.  So that's what up with the name, aren't you glad you asked?