"Why don't you just call it what it really is?"
"What?"
"S.P.A.D."
"What in the hell is S.P.A.D.?"
"Single Persons Awareness Day."
I went to an all-girls Catholic high school. While most of the nuns had died off by the time I arrived, there was still a vestige of Manhate that permeated the air of the 200-year-old Academy. It wasn't so much a hatred toward the opposite sex that school administrators emitted, more like fear coupled with an intense desire to believe that every single girl in the school did not do a 180 appearance-wise on Friday nights, tarting up to go drink cheap wine coolers in the parking lot of the boys' school before football games. Mostly, the Academy pretended that boys just didn't exist; it was easier that way, because without boys, there could be no sex, and without sex, eternal damnation of its students was a lot less likely.
Valentine's Day, however, was another story. All of a sudden, young (CHASTE!) love was a thing of beauty, to be celebrated and glorified by allowing us poor innocent young females to receive flower bouquets from our significant others. Yes, every Valentine's Day, without fail, the last hour of the day was spent with the Bouge (our ex-nun principal) or the Nipp (our 200-pound-plus dean of students) calling girls' names OVER THE ANNOUNCEMENTS to come to the office and pick up their massive bouquets of flowers and any other trinket (stuffed teddy bears, chocolates, spark plugs) a boy saw fit to send them.
This was one of the most miserable hours of the year for people like me, who for the first two years of high school studiously avoided any contact with the opposite sex out of pure, unadulterated fear, and for the last two avoided contact with them because I realized that the great majority were complete idiots. Girls like Alyssa or Kendall or Brittany, though, lived for this hour; it was the culmination of months of slutty outfits and SlimFast lunches. They rose triumphantly from their seats when the Nipp called their name, only to totter back in the room 10 minutes later, completely obscured by an epic spray of pink or cream roses (red would have been too serious; carnations just meant your man was a cheapskate - he may as well have sent you pork rinds and a can of Mountain Dew.) They would sit there, preening and purring (yes, purring), as other eager and secretly hopeful girls inquired as to who sent them - Ian (last week's flavor) or Jeff (this week's?)
Some girls couldn't take the shame of not receiving a public display of affection in plant form, and if they didn't happen to have a boyfriend come February, would insit their parents send them an-over-the-top arrangement at school to make up for it.
Is there a moral or even a point to this story? I don't know, kids, I just don't know. I actually did receive a bouquet senior year from my boyfriend, but by that time I was just so disgusted by the entire ritual that the flowers just seemed like a waste of money. Maybe the moral is that 200 lb. deans of students should not be allowed to perform sadistic Valentine's Day rituals designed to shame the unattached. Or maybe I just wanted to remind you that if tomorrow sucks for you, remember things could be worse.
(And if you're bored tomorrow, and want to like, I don't know eat an entire cheesecake or go key couples' cars while they're eating their candlelit meals, I'm available. I actually have someone I'm supposed to spend V-Day with, and he's on business. In Dallas. Where I went to high school, ironically. So...yeah, let's hang out.)
