remember when you were in grade school and you had to make those damned difficult valentines boxes for all yer classmates to "post" their teeny valentines in? i remember one year i made one that actually looked like a post-box, i built a flap, and a post for it, so it was like 2ft tall. i didn't decorate it in hearts and red construction paper, instead i pasted love notes and quotes and poems all over the outside. i was in 4th grade, i'd typed all the notes myself. my parents (well, the moth) didn't help with the thing, we didn't see each other very much because she worked a bizillion miles away from home, and my brother and i were left to our own devices for much of our after-school hours. (we both were way too involved in music, i was a cellist with a Purpose, and practiced til i couldn't read the notes, even when i was tiny.)
ok, so the valentines day box.
i didn't make mine with the trappings anyone expected. although it was the most imposing in Ms Kenner's class, and the way things were supposed to go, you didn't put your name on the boxes, it was an equal-opportunity card-getting for everyone. in theory, this should've worked out well for my desperate 4th grade self: i wasn't the most adorable of children, however adorable i've become (ha), and i was a big loner based on, what i now believe, the fact i had a cello with me nearly always. celli, when you're in 4th grade, are as big as another person. it must've seemed like my best friend was always around. (i had named her (because that's what yo yo did! and he was amazing!) as much as i loved playing, playing took up most of my life.
i didn't get any valentines in my un-pink-hearted-box. despite the supposed anonymity involved, my oddity stood out like me wearing yellow shoes with black pants. the bigger slam, really, was that i wasn't voted "most creatively decorated shoe box" or something like that.
my security has quite multiplied since i was a bespectacled 4th grader with a shiny bit of cello for my best companion. somewhere between then and now, i've embraced that valentine's day is pretty much the only manufactured holiday i can get into: christmas is a fake holiday anymore, fourth of july is quease making, thanksgiving (while i love eating) just makes no sense and has been xianised, but valentines day blows itself away by embracing consumerism. (something i don't espouse, actually) it has no compunction, in and of its specialness. there is no shame to valentines day, because hallmark invented it, there's no reason for anyone to pretend it exists for any other reason than to enrich sellers. really. i'm not fucking off here: it's really a great Slut for Retail. (i say this with all respect for sluts, btw).
I send valentines day cards, both snail- and e-mail to a schlew of people. most of whom don't expect it. not the big fuzzy hearts and sparkles cards, but the little kid cards. Last year it was dinosaur-themed. this year it's rainbows. the kind of left-out cards that were all that i could ask for as a kid, not having what one likes to call "money". the ritual of mailing teeny cards to friends far-flung has become joyful. i don't care about whether i *get* anything. things aren't where it is on valentines day, for me. it really is the thought that counts. and i want to think of as many people as i can.
at least our memories of valentine's are improving. i used to hate this "holiday". Now it's not so bad.
otherH
Posted by: otherH | Tuesday, 14 February 2006 at 02:57 PM
anything for you, even the improvement of prix fixe dinners and beds of roses, darling.
Posted by: om | Wednesday, 22 February 2006 at 07:16 PM
http://messexxx.info x
Posted by: Nbkvqla | Saturday, 02 June 2007 at 09:27 AM
This is one of the great Valentines day ideas.
Posted by: mirrors | Friday, 08 February 2008 at 06:29 AM