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.