Valentine's Day Eve

The bad thing about a new year is that it starts off with my least favorite holidays - New Year's and Valentine's Day. The good thing about it is getting them out of the way right off the bat. Like New Year's, Valentine's Day has never lived up to its hype - even when I was a dewy-eyed love muffin.

It was kinda fun when I was little, though. We'd go to the dime store and get our Valentines to sign and bring to school. In the olden days - now listen up, kiddies - the cards came in a sort of punch-out book form. We'd diligently punch out the cards and sign them, making sure we didn't forget anyone, even the stinky, goofy kids. (I'm sorry - was that judgmental?)

The next big project was to decorate a shoebox as our Valentine Box to take to school. Red, white, and pink everywhere - construction paper, crayons, scissors flying. Then - ta-da! A wondrous confection with that all-important slot on the top, where classmates could stuff in all those Valentines for me, me, me!

My mother was very old-fashioned about the logistics to delivering Valentines. In her day, you never signed the Valentine - that was part of the fun, trying to guess who sent it. And you'd deliver them to the door, knock, and run away. All very secretive. Sometimes we'd do it Mother's way when we were delivering cards to friends in our neighborhood. But most of the time - nah! - we liked folks to know who sent them a Valentine.

In elementary school, each classroom had a Valentine's Day Party - complete with cupcakes and ice cream. Right before the party, we'd walk around putting cards in all the boxes - good chaotic fun. The highlight of the party was opening our individual Valentine Boxes, of course. The cards held lots of coded messages - why did she/he give me that card?- and many a blush, hand-slap to the forehead, and "Eyyeeeeewwwwww!" rippled through the classroom.

Then, fun Valentine's celebrations came to a screeching halt when we hit junior high school. Things got too serious. It was no longer about red and pink shoeboxes and cupcakes and little candy hearts with "Be mine" written on them. Nope. Valentines Dances and cards or candy from that "one special person" reared their ugly heads. Shudder.

But it might be fun to pull out a shoebox and see if I can still create a confection of a Valentine receptacle. You know. In case somebody wants to send me a little message tomorrow.