Why I Hate Valentine's Day

It's once again that time of year when we give inaccurate replicas of our internal bodily organs to our loved ones so they can open them up, pillage through them, and ultimately throw them away. 

I'm speaking, of course, about Valentine's Day, the historical origins (what other kind of origins are there, anyway?) of which go back to at least 1983, when the month of February decided it wanted to be remembered for something other than groundhogs and the occasional leap year.  Sadly, it picked Valentine's Day as its signature event.

I don't like Valentine's Day. 

I can already hear you gasping all the way across cyberspace, but hear me out. 

Valentine's Day is full of overcrowded restaurants charging twice as much as they normally do.  It's a day where our culture tells us that we are losers unless we are in a relationship. And for those in a relationship, it's a day filled with pressure to do something unique and special every year, when every other couple is trying to do the same thing, which kills both the uniqueness and the specialty of whatever plans you might make. 

It's assembly-line romance.  It's a day where you value your sweetie not for who they are, but because it's a day on the calendar when you're told to do so.

The ads on TV tell men that if they buy their significant others nice things, they can demand physical intimacy, and tell women that if they expect to receive something, they better give in return.  Every kiss begins with Kay, after all. 

I hate Valentine's Day for all these reasons.  Happily for me, my wife feels the same way about this Hallmark holiday, and maybe even more so.

But that's not quite the whole story.

In truth, I've hated Valentine's Day since the eighth grade.  Valentine's Day of my eighth grade year, to be exact.

That year, I bought a heart filled with chocolate for a girl on whom I had had a silent crush.  In retrospect, I wish I would have just bought one of those plastic hearts they sell at CVS instead of going the extra mile for authenticity. 

I had carried a silent crush on this girl for months, and had received occasional doses of friendliness from her that I mistook as something more.  She was a cheerleader, and I was a stereotypical 120-pound middle school dork with thick glasses, so I should have known better.  But to some extent, I think the fact that I was so unappealing made me a target for the popular girls to tease me occasionally with false flirtation. 

I fell for it hook, line and sinker. 

Still, I sensed something was a bit off with the vibe I was getting from her.  I figured that asking her out on Valentine's Day, and giving her something along with my invitation, would erase any residual doubt she might have. 

So at the end of homeroom that Valentine's Day morning, I gave her my chocolate-filled heart and asked if she wanted to go out sometime. 

She said no.

I wasn't prepared for that kind of heartbreak, but it wasn't the worst part of the day. Using a prop (the heart) for my little proposition meant that the entire school saw me carrying around a gift that was obviously meant for something else.  So, much to my horror (and I'm sure, the horror of my little Mean Girl as well), a crowd gathered to watch my humiliating rejection, and then my brutal demise became the storyline of the day across Nelson Adams Middle School.

On the bright side, she never again flirted with me just for sport.

I tried to forget about it as the day went on, but the seven people who didn't watch my rejection go down live kept asking what became of that heart I was carrying around earlier in the day.  (I found out later that Mean Girl gave it to her little sister.) 

To make matters worse, later in that day, in Mrs. Dennis' English class, the day's activities including diagramming sentences. I still specifically remember being told to go up the chalkboard in front of the class to diagram the following:

"Why did the heartless beauty scorn my offer of affection."

I'm not making this up.

This unfortunate assignment brought renewed and widespread snicking from the rest of my class, as Mrs. Dennis sat back in her chair, looking confused. 

I was so shaken by the whole thing that I told my mom I was sick the next day and stayed home.

Ten days later, at the mature age of 14 and still irrational from humiliation, I attempted to reclaim some semblance of coolness by taking my parents' car for a drive through the neighborhood with a friend of mine. 

He crashed it into a tree. 

I got a pretty good whipping that night, but at least it gave my schoolmates something else to talk about.

So after enduring the traumatic events of February 1992, I guess it's no wonder that I still hate Valentine's Day. 

As I look back, it's probably no wonder that when Mean Girl actually starting showing (legitimate) interest in me a few years later, I spent most of my last two years of high school trying to win her over once and for all, against the better judgment of myself and every other person whose advice I valued. 

Doing so would have, in some weird way, cancelled out of one of the worst memories of my life.  

It didn't quite work out, but I can laugh about it now. 

The lesson I learned from that cold February day was not that I should avoid taking risks for fear of humiliation.  It wasn't that I should stop opening my heart to people, because they might have ulterior motives and hurt me in the end.

The lesson was that I should never buy someone something in the hopes that it will make them like me.

Most of the Valentine' Day messages we hear revolve around that false premise.  And that's exactly why I hate Valentine's Day.