On Valentine's Day

We've never been big into valentine's day. In fact, we've been so little into the "holiday" that way back in 2004 I dedicated an entire LiveJournal post to the fact that I hated valentine's day. Can't even blame it on being single and bitter. It was just a collection of random quotes from movies, TV shows, and the interwebs. I think this one was my favorite:

"A crust of bread is better than nothing. Nothing is better than true love. Therefore, a crust of bread is better than true love."

Who could argue with that kind of logic?

I can trace my dislike for the holiday all the way back to 1992. And I did, with the help of my stash of old diaries.

Let me quote from the mind of my 10-year-old self:

"(Febuary 14, 1992) Dear Diary, Valentine's Day. No exclamation. Richie really dumped me for another girl. I don't know if I still like him or not. I tried to say I'm sorry. He would not talk to me. What do I do at roller skating?"

ZOMG!! What do I do at roller skating?!?! It's certainly rough when the 6th grader (who doesn't even know you exist as anything other than a pesky 5th grader who follows him around like a lost puppy) dumps you for another girl. I bet you anything it was for one of those bitchy Petroski twins.

(as a side note, in digging around through that old diary, I found out that we were apparently planning to move to Pennsylvania at the end of that school year. Why don't I remember that?)

Then there was the year after that, in 1993, when I painted a ceramic heart to give to the boy that I had a crush on (seriously, since the 3rd grade). I put it in a little box lined with cotton and stuck it in his mailbox, then rode my bike back down Linden Ave as fast as I could so no one would see me. I guess it was painfully obvious that it was from me (I had a problem with wearing my heart on my sleeve, as my mom liked to say), so the next day when we were walking home from school he ran up to me and, obviously humiliated by the situation, shoved a wrapped gift box into my hands. I opened it to find a little Precious Moments teacup. Certainly not something an 11-year-old boy would do. It was painfully clear that his mother had bought it and forced him to reciprocate the gift. Of course, that didn't stop me from proudly displaying it on my bookshelf for years and years after.

After that brief trip down memory lane, I dug up my freshman year diaries just to torture myself further. Apparently this valentine's day (1996) was better - Sean (Sean P, my boyfriend of an entire 2 weeks) had bought me a gigantic bag of skittles and picked out all of the purple ones. I can still remember the gift bag he gave me that year, full of shiny purple easter grass. So random. Can't remember what the teddy bear looked like.

I flipped through the pages a little bit more until I saw this gem of an opening:

"Today was one of the best days of my life. Until we got caught."

Can't wait to see what that was all about.