A Valentine Carol

A Look at Valentine's Days Past and Future

Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday.  The number one reason for this is because it falls in my birth month of February.  There’s really nothing else special about February, other than the shorter number of days.  It’s also usually cold, which is a bummer.  So the one bright light in the whole month is Valentine’s Day.

I have always liked the idea of love and being in love and seeing people in love.  I had my first crush in kindergarten, and every year since I became progressively more boy-crazy.  This is most evident in the quote under my picture in my senior yearbook. 

My mom always celebrated every holiday, and she would give my brother and I some sort of gift and candy every year for Valentine’s Day.  This was the norm, despite my anguished, hormone-filled dreams and crushes, until I got my first boyfriend at age 17.  You have to understand, I would have gone out with almost any boy who asked me back in junior high and high school, but not a single one did.  It wasn’t that I was ugly or dumb or fat or whatever, it was that I was extremely shy and apparently unapproachable.  My first kiss(es) happened during a game of spin the bottle at a friend’s birthday party in 8^th grade. After that, all I had were my fantasies and trashy romances until Josh came along. 

I met him while working at Dairy Queen when I was 16 and he was 17.  We hit it off immediately, and loved working together.  I could be myself around him, and he made work fun.  However, we both ended up quitting DQ before he ever gave me more than a kiss on the cheek- until we met again about a year later when I was working at Hastings.  I was a junior in high school and he was a senior.  We only dated 5 months, but in that span of time we celebrated one Valentine’s Day and went to two proms.  I recall making him a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies from scratch and giving him a CD he wanted that Valentine’s Day.  What did he give me? A last minute gift of a large teddy bear and cheap box of chocolates.  Sigh.

Thus began my struggle with my favorite holiday.  I like to put thought into the gifts I give, and boys/men typically don’t think at all.  One of the first things any boyfriend learned about me is that I have no sense of smell and so I do not appreciate flowers.  Did they listen? What do you think? 

Subsequent boyfriends and one ex-husband continued to make Valentine’s Day a less than stellar experience.  DO NOT GIVE ME FLOWERS- I can’t smell them, and I consider them essentially dead, picked from the ground, lives cut short. As for chocolate, I love it- BUT NOT THE CHEAP STUFF.  Geez.  I don’t think it’s too much to ask for some romance.  Some original idea or gift that requires some thought and effort.

31 life lessons

31 Things I Have Learned in my 31 years

1.    Some people can look you right in the eye and lie to you.

2.    Walmart will literally hire anyone, and they don’t care.

3.    Democrats tend to be better-educated, well-read, and more charismatic than their counterparts. They are capable of thinking about the whole pie and not just their little slice.

4.    Most people never get to live their dream.

5.    Friends may come and go, but family is forever.

6.    Life is full of mistakes and disappointments; all you can do is make the best of it.

7.    Celebrities are in the minority.

8.    The janitor is just as important as the CEO.

9.    If something or someone makes you genuinely laugh, savor the moment.

10. Don’t let people make you feel shame for being who you are.

11.  College should be free so students can take random classes that interest them, and not just the ones necessary for whatever degree.  Also because student loan debt is a huge burden that brand-spanking-new college grads/adults should not be saddled with.

12.  Most people do not get a free ride through life.

13. Don’t take it for granted when you are healthy.  Enjoy the shit out of everything while you still can.

14. People are smart in different ways, so don’t call anyone stupid.

15. Cockroaches are horrible, nasty, disgusting creatures.

16. If you find yourself feeling happy for whatever reason, bottle that shit.

17. If you try to kill yourself but don’t actually die, then it wasn’t meant to be.

18. Having children is for the crazy.

19.  People will do whatever they want, regardless of promises, contracts, etc.

20. The most difficult thing in the world is to completely trust.

21.  Hoping and believing in luck is for fools- that’s why poor people stay poor.

22. Hard work and dedication is the only way to rise above your station in life.

23. Odds are, you’re never going to hit the jackpot, win the lottery, etc.

24. If you are a parent, savor those baby years.

25. Don’t gamble.

26. Don’t smoke or dip tobacco.

27. Go ahead and drink all you want- your liver’s gonna die before marijuana is ever legalized, and you’ve gotta have some vice.

28. If you’re feeling depressed, read a book.

29. If you are bored, waiting in line, tired of TV, etc.- read a book.

30. Pick books with happy endings.

31.  If you are going through a dry spell, read a trashy romance.

If wishes were horses . . .

What could have happened to you or what choices could you have made in high school that would have altered the course of your life?

Many things could have accidentally happened, and many things I could have chosen to change.

----For example, what if I got pregnant? Not that I was sexually active in high school. but what if? I would have 3 choices: abortion, adoption, or keeping the baby.  Thinking back, it's a damn good thing I was on birth control, strict about the use of condoms, and knowledgeable of boys' tricky ways ("Come on, baby, I can't feel anything inside this rubber" and "You can't just leave me hard like this- you gotta take care of it!") Take care of it? You horndog.  I honestly don't know what choice I would have made as a pregnant teenager. I believe to this day that you must experience something to truly know what course of action you would take. 

----I guess I could have fallen into the "wrong crowd." Sometimes I wish I had.  I probably would have had a lot more fun. Hell, I never did have any real fun in high school, and then I even missed out on the real college experience.  Thinking back, knowing what I know now about the education system, I wish I had gone to parties instead of staying home and doing my stupid homework.  A few dropped grades would be worth it since I turned out to not be destined for a big college.  When I think of all the missed parties . . .

----Also, if I had dropped band after 10th grade, I could have gone to vo-tech and learned something useful.  This is something I really wish I had done.  Back then, I was relatively healthy, if mentally and emotionally unstable.  I could have learned something to help me out career-wise, and then maybe I wouldn't have wasted all that money on college and gotten into so much debt.

----Here's one I especially like: What if I wasn't so shy in high school? What if my parents recognized my SAD and depression, and got me on the right meds?  That would have increased the likelihood of me making more friends and not being so goddamn lonely, which may have led to me asking out the boy of my dreams at the time.  Severe anxiety and fear of rejection kept me from asking out a single boy in high school.  Sigh. To all you boys I went to high school with: you missed out.  I was a very horny and lonely teenage girl.  Back then, I actually opened up once you took the initiative to get to know me.  Every single boy/man I have dated has said that I am easy to talk to, very open, very understanding, and in fact, I have been proposed to 4 times and married twice.

I truly wish some things had turned out different for me back then, but what's done is done.