Aselin

Valentines Day scares me. The older I get the more I recognize I haven’t changed as much as one would expect in the time I’ve been allotted. While Valentine's Day should be a celebration of those who mean the most to us, what it really is, in reality is a contrived holiday where the less secure of us merely plead they will be acknowledged.

Valentines Day started to go bad for me in the second grade. I was new to the school and many of these kids had gone to school together since they could remember. Which for a second grader is two years. I had filled out my carefully selected, platitude-filled, tokens for the rest of my classmates. As a class we had each made a lovely shoebox to receive the outpouring we would expect. Mine was a stunning collage of poorly cut hearts, torn paper doilies and glitter. It was spectacular.

As the class began to pass out our valentines, my heart was racing and my sweaty palms were making the ink run. Wandering through the desks delivering each of my notes I worried - would Timmy think this was too forward? What would Joey think? I don’t love, love him but he might get the wrong idea from the chalky sugar hearts I included. Would Sally know that I wanted to be her best friend since I chose the prettiest valentine of the bunch for her? I was a seven year old mess.

I rushed back to my mailbox to open my notes. I checked and checked, Sally didn’t even give me a valentine and Timmy, gave me one that had my name scribbled out, someone else’s name written in and then scribbled out. It’s painful not to matter to the people you want to matter to.

Over the years Valentine's Day passed pretty much like that - me filled with hopes of some sort of ardent declaration while my homemade mailbox remained painfully empty.

In high school I decided to take matters into my own hands. Enough of this not being noticed I would take the Cupid by the arrow and create my own destiny. I had a terrible crush on a boy a couple of years older than me, Gary Clark. Student Council raised funds by selling carnations they would deliver to other students for a dollar each. You could select from three degrees of amour - white for friends, pink for sweethearts and red for burning passion. I paid for a pink carnation and carefully crafted my message. It was something copied off another valentine, but there was no mistaking my sweetheart sentiment. I signed it Az - my nickname for as long as I can remember. Everyone called me Az.

The big delivery day came, and went. I saw Gary in the halls, in the cafeteria, on the soccer field. He didn’t even make eye contact with me. I saw him at church on Sundays, youth activities, football games - I was even in his home a number of times. Nothing. The rejection was crushing.

I resolved I would never be a pink carnation fool ever again.

A year or so after I graduated from High School and Gary was in college I was visiting his home for a church function. I garnered the courage and asked him about the carnation and why he never even said ‘thanks’. He looked at me quizzically, trying to place the event when his face lit with recognition. He went to his room and returned with the pink heart. While my crush was long extinguished, I was flattered he had kept the little note.

“Is this the heart?” he asked. Blushing I acknowledged my note. He started to laugh and said “I never knew this was from you.”

Somehow this did not let me down easier. I had spent a whole dollar for Pete’s sake, and come on, how many “Azs” does one person know?

“I thought it was from Andrea Alstot - and the signature was ‘A2’ - A squared.”

Well this was awkward. Here I was, a pink carnation fool all over again.

While I have long outgrown the unrealistic expectations I still feel a bit of worry over Valentine’s Day. The reality is, I think we all just want to be noticed. This year, my mailbox was plenty full.