"The reason I hate Valentines Day"

The title says it all...

The reason I hate Valentine’s Day.

   


    In all honesty there are a myriad of reasons I despise Valentines Day. The whole “holiday” aspect makes me queasy if you really wanna know. It always has. Well, maybe not always but ever since I was a kid in grade school I began to harness my disgust at the whole package that is Valentines Day.

    OK. Let’s go way back shall we? Yes...lets.

    My earliest memory of my fledgling hate was in the 4th grade. Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas all come and gone and had been fun and successful. What with art projects, plays, gifts, costumes and all that, I felt that February 14th would be a good one too. The day before Valentines (ironically enough the 13th!) my Dad and I went shopping for cards at the local drug store. We got a box of Empire Strikes Back Valentines cards to hand out to the kids, a big card for my teacher and another regular sized one for the principal. I really wanted to get a big and sappy one for my then crush Brooke Hill but I decided against it since my aching pain of rejection and humiliation got the best of me. The image of her opening the card and seeing that it was from me and her laughing or making gagging sounds made me put the card down as I opted to make a Princess Leia card decorated with flowers and hearts in its stead. The rest of the class would just get a regular card, even my best pal Monte, the chubby kid that taught me how to shoplift and shared my obsession with Mad Magazine.

    The day before Valentines also meant that we made mailboxes for our ensuing cavalcade of cards and gifts. Most kids, especially the girls, decorated their cardboard and construction paper creations, that were to be taped down to the side of your desk in order for classmates to walk by and drop in their Valentine offering to you, with hearts and flowers and such. If memory serves me correct, my mailbox was adorned with the likenesses of Pac Man and Donkey Kong, all eating and throwing hearts as to not seem too sappy or girly. Monte I believe drew some sort of battle on his. Men with swords laid to waste poorly drawn dragons and blood was the choice for red, not so much to fill in the cartoonish hearts that everyone else chose to use on theirs. And when the 14th rolled around, after our lessons and before the last bell, Mrs. Walker said it was time to hand out our cards and such to the other classmates and soon the room was a swirl of kids scrambling to slip cards of all shapes and sizes in the slots of our school made mailboxes.

    After all the cards were passed out we returned to our desks and inspected the booty. Looking around the room, I noticed most kids had the same kind of cards that I had gotten; those prefabricated perforated edged postcards with images from “Happy Days”, disco dancing animals and whatever else was popular then. Mailboxes literally exploded with stuff as they emptied the loot onto their desks. I then noticed a lot of the more popular kids had gotten large cards, even the boys, but the majority were the girls as they squealed in delight to pink and lacy cards given to them by their friends or crushes. Brooke Hill was especially embellished as she was the object of a few boys’ desire and was usually seen with overly tanned and surfer wannabe Joel who gave her a stuffed teddy bear holding a bright red heart. Even Monte made out good. His box flooded out a decent lot of cards and he smiled his crooked chubby smile looking over the selection of To and From cards.

    This got me excited. I picked up my box from the side of my desk and noticed something right off the bat. The mailbox was quite light. Well, I thought, those little cards aren’t very heavy and playing video games had probably given me some upper arm strength, so I paid that very little attention. As I popped open the top to my mailbox and turned it over a smattering of cards flitted out of it. Shaking the box only did such and no other cards slid out. I was hoping it would be like an old Warner Brothers cartoon where a few cards came out but then after a pregnant pause and some light jostling the mailbox would jettison a slew of multi-colored cards and gifts making me the most popular kid in the 4th grade. Monte would lead the class in applause as he stood on his chair encouraging everyone as Brooke Hill walked over and sat next to me asking if I wanted to “go around” with her before giving me a peck on the cheek.

    Nope. About half the class had actually thought of me and given me one of those stupid perforated cards. A few of the nice kids, nerds and Monte had given me cards but no one else. I literally sat there staring at a stunted pile of crappy cards looking on the back, noticing TO: Mark FROM: Jill. Sure I was appreciative of what I got, but looking on as the rest of the class literally drowned in a sea of pink, white and red, I sat there moping over a gray heap of assembly line cards that looked like a pack of Garbage Pail Kids opened but no gum was to be found.

    Was it because my last name begins with a W? No, that can’t be it. I thought for a second that some kids ran out of cards because I was close to the end of the alphabet. But looking over to Sarah Young and Than Xiu I knew that couldn’t be the case because their desks swelled with Valentines Day pride. When Monte came over to see what I got he began to laugh. His usual hearty laugh that made little white spittles on the corner of his mouth I enjoyed became a throbbing mockery of my shame and low status on the cool kid scale. I played it off by trying to not care but as I walked home that day I couldn’t help feel rage through my tears. So I went home, threw all the cards away, played Atari wishing all the kids in class were the Space Invaders as I zapped them into stupid crapface oblivion.

    After that day I learned to not look forward to Valentines Day. The rest of my school career was to ignore that day entirely, even though nothing even came close to that embarrassing time in Mrs. Walkers class.

    As age and education came into play, Valentines took on a more forced expression for desperate and insecure couples to validate their empty relationships. The fact that it was the #1 day to get married made me disgusted at the whole notion of marriage and the future of coupledom. It was a Hallmark sponsored holiday anyway, a corporate bribe to get you to buy more creased laminated paper with words written by a crack team of failed poets and copywriters. Images of doggies tumbling out of baskets, bunnies hugging and saying “I wuv you”, cupids shooting arrows at doe eyed idiots made me cringe. Being a huge fan of most holidays, I knew that after I took down the Christmas tree and sobered up from New Years, I would then be lambasted with heart shaped candy boxes, sappy cards and “take her breath away with a diamond ring” every time I entered a mall or drug store. Walgreens at Halloween and Christmas was a home away from home as I sauntered through aisles of masks, fake blood, snowmen and twinkling lights, but the days before February 14th I raced past the section almost electric with neon red hearts and sparkly white laced cards. Where once stood a cackling witch or waving Santa Claus, now featured a big dopey teddy bear with a big heart on his chest and smiling dumb and knowing.

    “Damn you Joel! Damn you all!”

    Now that I am in my mid 30s, happy and in a secure and loving relationship...I still hate Valentines Day. The “holiday” literally has no merit. It just seems lame the whole thing. I don’t know. I mean, I still could be repressing emotions from grade school trauma past, but as a fan on almost all major holidays (except the vile St. Patrick’s Day, but I’ll get to that later) Valentines has the look and feel of a bad outfit worn to an awards ceremony or an album filled with mediocre and simple ballads. Halloween is full of spookiness and paganism, Thanksgiving is a day where you just eat till you explode, Easter is the strangest one where rabbits lay colored eggs and Jesus rises from the grave and of course Christmas which is the mack daddy of holidays and if you know me you know my take on that one. Valentines is just not for me I gotta say. I don’t send Valentines cards, I cringe when I see ads on TV for Valentines related gifts and stories and I especially don’t want to get married on that day. If I did, it would be with tongue planted firmly in cheek. For now I sit and wait till April rolls around, the gateway to when the “real” holidays begin.

    And who was St. Valentine anyway? The patron saint of cheesy gifts? I don’t know. I don’t mean to come off as some aging curmudgeon but in a way that’s exactly what I am. Was it the 4th grade rejection or the fact that Valentines Day just makes all men wince in agonizing pain as they sift through cuddly wuddly bears and kissy kissy cards?

    Sure it is. And I’m just the guy to stand up to say Valentines Day sucks.

    Next!