Everybody else is doing it. Why not share my stories as well? (If everybody else jumped off a bridge, would you? It depends how warm the water is and what I’m wearing.)

The bad.

The worst was in 1999. I had just gotten into an official relationship with an “older” man. Okay, he was 17, but I was only 15. That was a big deal then! We met barely a month before V-day rolled around. At that time I was still giddy over Sweetest Day and all the lovey dovey things that went along with V-day. I wasn’t jaded or bitter like I am now 😛 So the boy, let’s call him John, arranged to pick me up after school and we would celebrate the day together.
Sounds great right? Well it would have been if he showed up. Let me say that I went to an all girls high school. Having your boyfriend pick you up on any given day was something to be proud of…especially if he had a car. So imagine my disappointment when my knight in a red Pontiac never showed. I thought that he may have been held up at school so I waited outside for a while. After an hour I went inside and called my mom, upset. I was stood up on V-day in front of my classmates no less.

I took the bus home and sulked in the kitchen with a twinkie (I don’t know that it was a twinkie, but I’m only assuming since I loved them back then). At some point that evening I received a phone call from John’s mom telling me he had to be taken to the hospital that morning. I can’t remember what the issue was, but it had something to do with his heart. Aww…it was broken on V-day! So I wasn’t mad at him anymore. He didn’t purposely leave me outside of my school feeling like an ass. He recovered in a few days and we were able to see each other. Unfortunately this meant that my mom drove me over to his house where she met his mom and we were able to exchange cards and then go our separate ways. Tres romantic!

John and I ended up staying together for another year or so. Of course we broke up before the next V-day rolled around.

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Another not-so-fantastic-V-day story is from 2001(I think) My then boyfriend, we’ll call him Matt, had been dating for about six months prior to V-day. The day before we hung out after school as usual and went to some Fun Fair event at his school. That was actually fun. I have no idea what I did there, but I had fun. We got back to my house and he received a call from his mother telling him his father had just died. His dad was in the hospital a few weeks prior to this but was expected to recover and was back home.

I’m not completely heartless, I did sympathize with Matt. The next day I went to his house after school to offer any type of support I could to him and his family. But a small part of me was upset that I couldn’t celebrate V-day. Couldn’t he have waited ONE day?! But again, I’m not heartless, so I didn’t voice that question or walk around pouting. But it did make it hard to celebrate any other V-days that occurred during the span of our relationships. I felt guilty buying a card to remember the day his father passed away.