My 2 nephews Micah and Joey have been staying here for the last week and a half. This morning, Micah asked what the date was. I told him February 14.
"Is this Valentines Day?"
"Yeah."
"We're supposed to bring Valentines cards for the whole class. My mom already bought them but they're at my house so I guess I can't hand them out, eh?"
I guess not.
Valentines ranks right up there with Halloween for me. The great thing about Halloween is the fact that it is my daughter's birthday. In my life, there's nothing good about Valentines. Maybe it has something to do with my tendencies to be rebellious. "They" are telling me that I need to show my Valentine that I love him. Well, you can't tell me what to do. So I won't.
Maybe it has something to do with the emotional baggage I've been carrying around since grade 4. Most elementary school teachers require students to give cards to everyone in the class if they are going to hand them out. That was not something we did at school when I was young. And every year, there'd be a few kids who got nothing, a few who got something from almost everyone and the rest (I was one of them) would fall somewhere in-between. Most years I would get 3 or 4 which would remind me again that I was not one of the more popular kids. And I never got one from a boy.
One year, my best friend wrote a poem for me on a card:
Roses are red
Violets are black
You look better
With a knife in your back. (Just kidding!)
Ha. Ha.
Maybe I don't like Valentines day because it simply reminds people who don't have a special someone that they're missing out. I used to get depressed every time Feb. 14 rolled around.
Or maybe Valentines day is an just opportunity for retailers to guilt consumers (primarily men) into buying stuff that they probably think is a waste of their money but they better otherwise they'll be in big trouble.
Early on in our relationship, Wes would give me the prescribed chocolate and flowers. It wasn't too long into our marriage when I suggested that he didn't have to waste his money. Flowers just add to the clutter on my counter and chocolate, well, I can never eat just one piece. So I'd cram the whole box into my mouth and not share. It was ugly. I did not like the way I acted. And then I had to live with the after effects of a sugar rush and heartburn.
Needless to say, we won't be celebrating Valentines day today. I will tell Wes that I love him (something I do most days) and maybe I'll make something for dessert.
So there. That's all.
3 comments:
i agree. valentines is one of the worst holidays. i'm pretty sure it was created by a consumer minded society as a money grab. it HAS been 6 weeks since christmas. the commercialism of it makes me sick.
still... i DID get flowers this week. that's a record in and of itself.
I'm with you - valentine's sucks. I had convinced the girls that they didn't need to buy into all the pressure and give out valentine's cards that just end up in landfill sites anyway, but then last night Julie was feeling a little sad about it, so I ended up at the drugstore buying the last thing they had on the shelf. But I just couldn't bring myself to buy crappy cards, so I bought candy.
I feel much the same about Valentines Day. I feel it is very much a commercially created day.. with money being the motivation.. not love. We rarely celebrate it either.
Halloween is a very special day in our household also. My granddaughter was born on that day. :-)
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