A New Reason to Hate Val's Day

In honor of love, these photos are some of my favorite couples that you've never heard of. Just know, they're really great people and even better as a pair. Secretly, Big Lu really loves love.

Dad tells this terrible story about Valentines Day in elementary school. He was an outcast. The fourth of five Lebanese, big-nosed, last-years-hand-me-downs wearing kids and had a military haircut during the Flowing Locks era of the sixties. His heartless teacher had all the kids write their names on a paper bag and line them up on the front wall of the classroom. Then all the little jackass kids delivered their Valentine’s cards and candies to the corresponding bags and at the end of the day the kids collected their treats and danced off towards a love-filled sugar coma. But not Dad. Dad’s bag was empty. Not a single of his thirty classmates gave him anything for Valentines Day.

This little tale makes Mom, Ellen, and me want to cry. I think about this every Valentines Day and one year, I think I was twelve, I even made Dad 30 different (albeit, quite similar) Valentines Day cards and gave them to him in a paper bag but even that didn’t make me feel better. I’ve hated Valentines day my whole life but never because it made me feel especially single and unlovable but because my Dad’s feelings were hurt on Valentines Day in the sixties and I’ll never get over it.

Another reason Valentines Day is the pits is because, as a school-kid, you don’t know how seriously your candy grams will be taken. I remember that the themed packs of Valentines Day cards you picked out from Kerr Drug would inevitably include a number of cards that said “Be mine” or  “You’re my Valentine!” or other things that would suggest polygamy or a fear or commitment when caught handing out to multiple people.

“But I thought I was your Valentine?” some pimply, fragile boy would say to me every year.

“It’s just a card!” my sassy friend Cassandra would retort and she would shoo people with the flick of her wrist.

I tried to save the emotional or title-instating cards for my girlfriends who I knew wouldn’t read into the phrases and be more delighted that I had forced my parents to buy name brand candy to attach to the backs of the cards but every year you still wound up with the most unsettling cards and the most daunting names left last on the class list. These were people you did not wish to acknowledge on Valentines Day because your feelings towards them swung dramatically in either direction.

I remember laboring over who received what card phrase for I found all Valentine cards to be a bit melodramatic for a forced upon occasion of spreading love and tenderness. I did not wish to partake in the giving of Valentines but I had to because after years of kids like Chris Union staggering through elementary school full of hurt and shame, teachers wised up and required everyone to love on everyone. I tried to think of the kids that would get the worst, cheapest, and most sarcastic Valentines (the Chris Unions) and I would give them my nicest phrases and unbroken candy bars.

And guess who wound up smothered by a small contingency of class nerds with heart-wrenching crushes on her? I did. Valentines Day meant I would spend the following weeks warding off kids with glasses, allergies, and an excessive number of bug bites covered with Band-Aids and ointment.

Maybe it was middle school when we were no longer required to give false love to our classmates. I dutifully dropped out of the movement and instead took my mandatory place consoling my friends while they cried about their crushes not getting them anything special. I also recall recoiling at the sight of handmade, beaded bracelets that my friends expected their boyfriends to wear with pride.

"Oh my!" I would say, leaving the interpretation up to them.

Even now, as an impostor adult, I expect nothing for Valentines Day for I consider you mildly foolish to expend working hours pay on a marketers occasion. That said, I am a florist these days and the Valentines Day fools are a great asset to our money making venture. But this week something special happened. I had to make tons of vases full of red roses which was a bit redundant and my fingers are raw from thorn pricks BUT for every dozen roses I made, I wrote out a card message to each lovely lady who would find these roses in her office or on her kitchen table. Now maybe you're expecting me to say that the kind, heartfelt notes these fellas had me write on the cards were touching and unique and made me realize that when people really love each other they love to spoil each other and look for occasions to remind each other that they are special but that's not the case. Men are pretty unoriginal and I think most of them don't understand the concept of personalizing something. 

"...well it's Valentines Day, so roses I guess?

"Yes Sir but does she have a favorite flower or color? Does she like pinks? Pink can also be Valentines day-like but with a bit of a different spin and you know, nothing's more timeless than white roses. Would you like to do something more unique to her? 

"Nah. Red's good."

I mostly don't blame them. It's a crock holiday that tends to come at that burdensome time of year when you realize that the new year isn't really all that new or exciting and you're in the middle of rewriting your plan for the year. Shut up and take your roses lady! I love you!

That's what they're saying. 

But what I realized; for every little card that I wrote "Happy Valentines Day (female name)! I love you! - (male name)" one girl was going to get the full satisfaction of knowing that she is doing a sensational job running a tight ship, for (male name) knows better than to not buy her flowers on February 14th.