Hallmark Holiday: Valentine’s Day

Happy Single Awareness, y’all!! Er, sorry, it’s the epitome of a Hallmark Holiday: Valentine’s Day. I’m acutely aware that it’s a week after my birthday. For being a hapless romantic, you’d think I’d be all over this, but I’m over it the moment it’s mentioned. I’ve pinpointed the experience that soured me from Cupid’s arrow.

Hallmark Holiday: Valentine’s Day

My 2nd grade teacher sent home a letter addressed to my parents with the guidelines on the do’s and don’t’s of valentines delivery. What they didn’t anticipate was the collateral damage done to my fragile feelings after delivery. And since we were a lower-middle class family, spending money on cardboard that was gonna be discarded almost immediately seemed like a waste. My Mom and I dragged along my little sister to the local Fred Meyer store (yes, the same one that has starred in a few posts of mine)

We read over the instructions carefully. If you were gonna purchase them, that we needed to buy for all the children regardless of gender. My teacher, Mrs. Frasier, already black-listed me from an earlier incident involving me (another story for another time, and it’s definitely not family appropriate) Once we returned home, I immediately started filling out my valentines for this Hallmark Holiday: Valentine’s Day.

Then Valentine’s Day arrived finally. With eager anticipation, I delivered my 2 inch by 2 inch printed cardboard to each of the young ladies that I liked. And of course, I reluctantly dropped off the boy’s ones too. The class did the same as instructed by the teacher. At recess, I combed through my cards and envelopes hoping to find a reciprocal Hallmark Holiday: Valentine’s Day from the girls I liked.

Not a one.

My mother didn’t warn me about love. I really, really wished she had! Mind you, I did receive valentines from everyone else. I sat there on the playground during recess reading each canned catchphrase of “Be Mine” to “My Heart is Yours”. Years later I would realize that the most difficult emotion to process for me is unrequited love.

So Spaceship Earth, do you revel in grand gestures of love for your love on February 14th? Or do you silently wish it would simply pass you by? Let us know below!

Until next time, be good like you should, and if you can’t be good, be good at what you do!

Mic drop *bOoM*

‘los; out