Valentines

First - for those of you irritated that I didn't put an apostrophe before the "s" I just wanted to make sure you knew that this blog entry doesn't belong to "Valentine". Rather - it is about "Valentines" - those little cards we passed out in school.

I would just like to take a moment to THANK GOD that I've grown up and am no longer required to pass out and/or receive those stupid little esteem killers! ICK!!! What a horrible horrible concept!!

OK so first through maybe fourth grades were fine. Most parents filled out the Valentines for their kids anyway and so nobody was left out. (I've never seen such a variety of different spellings for "Erin.") But by fifth grade we were thinking, "Hey, I can do this myself!" and thus people started getting left out. You know who they were. Ugly girl. Ugly boy. And on occasion, Super Attractive Girl & Boy because you were "Ugly Girl" or "Ugly Boy" and didn't want to get made fun of. So then they implemented the rule that "If you're passing out cards you MUST PASS ONE OUT TO EVERYONE!" This was almost worse because then I, as one of the reigning "Ugly Girl" and "Fat Girl" and quite often "Weird Girl" and also "Big Giant Hair Girl", would get the reject cards.

Oh how it sucked - sitting there with 52 little assorted Valentines trying to figure out which saying wouldn't be too suggestive to someone. I.E. "I don't want to give the "You're a Cutie" card to Nick because then Nick will show it to John and Danny and they'll laugh. So I've gotta give him something more generic like, "Special Valentine." I'll give "You're a Cutie" to Andrea because she has dimples."

And I knew the other kids were all doing the same damn thing!! Thus, when I got cards like:



Or



I translated this into visions of "Nick" or "John" or "Danny" etc. sitting at home and thinking, "Hmm... who in the class should I give the elephant to. Oh I KNOW!!!" Or...."I'm definitely giving the sexy fox to Natalie, the lioness to Renee, the panther to Amy... this leaves the dog."

One year I simply avoided the whole conflict by buying blank heart shaped pieces of cardstock and some heart stickers and made everyone Valentines that said "To Nick, From Erin". No awkward phrasings!! And I got a "That's Really Cool!!" from a few people when I took the moment to make existing couples matching cards.

Then it was on to High School. Oh - my all girls high school was really such a relief! Granted - I did still spend my whole freshman year thinking that everyone was secretly a bitch before finally realizing that most people were actually just kind. (Until they were eventually bitches but bitches with reason.)

And before I end this entry - I would just like to give a shout out to those people that handed out the Valentines with the little packages of lifesavers. Those were cool!