Valentine's Day Dropout

I blame it on my parents. My mom gave birth to me in February, so Valentine's Day was always a lesser event than my birthday party.

Then my folks taught me the art of non-sentimental gift-giving. One year my father gave my non-gardening mom a wheelbarrow for Mother's Day. My mom rallied with a women's bicycle for Father's Day. The most memorable present, though, was a truckload of manure that Mom ordered one year. For Dad's garden, she said.

With romantic examples like that, roses just never took on the allure for me that they have for others. Still, on a whim I looked at Valentine's Day cards yesterday. After poking through syrup-saturated To My Husband poems and confused lust love messages, I decided not to spend $2.75 to have someone who doesn't know me say what I ought to say myself. Just to prove that I've got nothing against Valentine's Day, I might even tell Andrew today that I love him. He did, after all, give me Tupperware for my birthday. And new shower curtains. Gotta love a guy who knows what makes my heart go pit-a-pat!