Valentine's Post: the crappy one

Well, Valentine's Day is here. So here it goes... my hatred of the holiday stems back to high school... don't worry... I'll write about a decent memory shortly. :)

I was okay with V Day in grade school. At the parties we were forced to give everyone in the class a card so our moms would buy those packs of 30 cards for us to use. And I always got lots of cards even though I knew that most of them were forced upon me. At least I was included.

Flash forward to high school. I went to a school out in the middle of Dudley, but it was a pretty big school. And for some reason V Day was really, really big there. How big? Well, I'll tell you. There was a separate building from the school for the ROTC classes. It was divided into 3 rooms. One room, on V Day, was set aside for floral deliveries as they were too overwhelming for the front office to handle. Students got selected, I never knew how, to work the floral deliveries in shifts. I am pretty sure some kids got out of class to do this. And they kept rotating a list on the outside of the building with names of people who had flowers inside. So between classes people would run out and check the list.

I would walk out there with my friends. I am sure I even looked at the list. But I had no illusions. I was not on the list at any point, in any year. So then I remember every class having girls with their big vases of flowers sitting on their desk. And the cafeteria? OMG... it was like someone had vomited red carnations and roses all over the room. The girl with a vase full of 3 red carnations looked vaguely pathetic due to all the dozens of roses (I didn't say the guys in my school were creative).

I know my value as a person was not defined by my lack of flowers. But at the time it sure sucked to not get anything. And I always remembered that feeling.

One year my mom and dad sent me flowers for my birthday... intentionally not putting their names on the card... and I got home from school to see mom on the deck saying "where are your flowers?" I said "what flowers?" We called the school and the delivery person had just arrived... 30 minutes after school let out. They were gorgeous flowers, though. And my mom and dad's love to send them was more powerful than my lack of flowers before... but I still laugh at the lateness of their arrival. :)