This was posted here on this day in 2003. If the teacher in this story did that today, we would all have been plunged into a discussion about the propriety of teaching Gay Marriage…
Among the many joys of today is that I am no longer subjected to a humiliating ritual of elementary school. It was that on this holiday, we all had to buy valentines for everyone in our class, even of the same sex.
I guess it was someone's solution to the problem of avoiding the "Charlie Brown" problem of a kid not getting any, or not getting as many as someone else…or something. But a week before 2/14, the teacher would pass out a list of all the students to everyone, and we all had to go out and buy those boxes of cheapo valentines (usually depicting cartoon characters) and address one to each of our classmates, including the ones whose guts we hated. One year I remember, we had 36 students in my class, plus I needed one for the teacher and two for the teaching assistants. I didn't need one for me, so that meant 38.
Unfortunately, the stores I went to that year didn't sell boxes of 38 or even 40. They all seemed to be multiples of 25 or 30, which meant buying two boxes. The extras were handy, though. Not wishing to send another guy a card with the slightest romantic suggestion, I had to reject a lot of them. If it said, "Will you be my valentine?", I could send it to a girl but not to another boy. It was just too embarrassing. If I'd given Louis Farrell the card that said, "Be My Valentine, Cutie," I'd still be hearing gay jokes.
Most of the other guys managed to find (or make) cards that just said "Happy Valentine's Day" to give to others of like gender — but somehow, even the year I bought an extra box, I didn't have enough non-sexual ones for the males in my class. I had to sit there and decide which guy was going to get the one that said, "Let's Be Valentine Buddies." It went to the one I figured was least likely to use it against me. The card makers seem to have gotten hip to this dilemma and most of those I now see in stores are about as non-romantic as they can get and still pass the things off as Valentine's Day cards.
The teacher usually assigned a student to tally everyone's valentines and make sure no one got shorted. If you were short — say, you didn't fill out one for dumb ol' Sidney Passey — you had to quickly hand-make one. One year, a student enrolled in our class on 2/13 and everyone had to whip up a card for this kid who was darn near a total stranger to us. I wrote on mine, "Happy Valentine's Day, Whoever You Are."
I'm glad I don't have to do that anymore. Now, I look back and marvel at how the school system managed to take a neat idea like Valentine's Day, drain it of all its meaning and turn it into an ordeal. But then, they did that with just about everything.