I used to hate Valentine's Day. I despised all of it--the sappy cards, the pink candy hearts, the store aisles bursting with foil-wrapped chocolates, waxy plastic flowers and furry teddy bears holding said chocolates or flowers. To me, these commercial items didn't say love, they screamed obligation. Have you ever been in a grocery or drug store at 9:30 pm on February 13th? You'll find a bunch of last-minute suckers, frantically searching the already picked over rows of cards, desperate for any eleventh-hour token of love to hand to their sweetheart the next day. I wanted acts of love to be spontaneous, and I sure didn't want to share Valentine's Day with people who bought into the commercialism of love.
When I was in eighth grade, Valentine's Day fell on a school day and my boyfriend of all of one week brought me an oversized gorilla carrying a rose. The monkey was half my height and four times as wide as me. I had to wrap my arms around it and heave it around the Middle School hallways, pushing my way blindly through crowds of gawking middle schoolers. Not one for big displays of affection, I was mortified. We broke up not too long after that.
In High School I made a big deal to everyone that I was against Valentine's Day. When people would ask my V-Day plans, I would roll my eyes and sigh. "I don't celebrate Valentine's Day," I'd explain, telling them about how love should be shared every day, not just on the one day that the government decided. I was also against cards that already had a declaration of love inside them, leaving room just for a signature from the purchaser. I wanted long, hand-written love letters, and wanted them all year long. (Hmmm....was I cynical or just high maintenance?)
Valentine's Days came and went. Sometimes I was single, sometimes I was dating someone, but it didn't matter to me either way. In college a funny, adventurous guy named Thad who I had met a few weeks before asked me out for Valentine's Day. In lieu of a date with him, I threw an anti-Valentine's Day party with a bunch of my girl friends. He handled the rejection well, kept on coming around my apartment, and years later we got married. Throughout our relationship, Valentine's Day was just something we didn't worry about.
And so this year, I'd like to personally invite all of you to put on your fanciest attire and come to our annual Fancy Storytime on Saturday, February 13th at 3 pm.
XOXOXOXOXO
--Krista
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