Not every Valentine’s Day ever has been awful for me, just most of them! In an effort not to be hopelessly grouchy, I took a few minutes to reflect on the Ghosts of Valentine’s Day Past to think of a good one to share with you, and I actually came up with a pretty great one.
My first serious boyfriend in high school spoiled me rotten rotten rotten. It wasn’t that he spent tons of money on me, no. It was all the attention he gave me. He listened to me and retained little details, held open doors for me and was just generally open to showing the world he was thrilled I was his girl, proud beyond compare to have me on his arm. Silly me: I thought all my future boyfriends would be that good to me…obviously, I knew nothing about the world to have thought that!
For Valentine’s Day that year, I was really hoping to get flowers delivered to me…but at the same time, I didn’t want them. The ridiculous cost of cut flowers for Valentine’s Day, the jacked up price tags for flowers that are usually of lesser quality than you can get the rest of the year, all that sort of thing has always offended my thrifty practical side. But! I looooooooove bouquets of flowers, love them! So I was torn. I didn’t want my boyfriend to spend his whole week’s pay on flowers that would just droop and die, but at the same time, it seemed so hopelessly romantic to have the floral delivery van pull up in the driveway, the knock at the door, the sweet sentiment on the card tucked in with the blooms! The local florist had the usual insane prices on deliveries, but had a fantastic price on cash and carry flowers that wouldn’t break the bank. My boyfriend bought the flowers in person for the bargain price, tucked a card in and had one of his friends deliver them to my house…so it wasn’t the floral delivery van…it was a sputtering Buick, but still, I got the joy of peeking out the window, seeing flowers and running to the door. Such a thrill! And he wasn’t done yet…
I have always been a chocoholic. I love chocolate. You can’t hide it from me, I can sniff it out. In high school, I was crazy about the chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips in it made by Frusen Glädjé (there’s a brand name from the past, hmm?!). It came in plastic pints, was a bit on the expensive side and was pure decadence and bliss…and it was also a little hard to find at times, not always available at the grocery store. Gourmet and specialty ice creams were not at all as common as they are now, so this stuff was a big deal to me. My boyfriend’s dad drove one of those big freezer trucks that delivers ice cream to the grocery stores, and miracle of miracles, Frusen Glädjé was one of the brands his company distributed…but I didn’t know that! About an hour after my flower delivery when I was still swooning over my sweet little card and the romance of the flowers and calling all my girlfriends to tell them about it, there was a knock at the door. My boyfriend had brought me an entire freakin’ case of the much-loved chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips in it, still shrink-wrapped like it would’ve been delivered to the grocery store. I squealed and jumped up and down like I’d won the lottery!
So there you have it, folks, not every Valentine’s has been awful for your Kat. A Valentine’s Day from TWENTY YEARS AGO still stands out as memorable to me…a boyfriend who knew how to stretch a dollar without skimping on the romance and who went out of his way to come up with a special gift unlike any other is the one Valentine’s Day that I can recall that someone made me feel absolutely adored…and um, yep, I believe that was kind of the last one like that, so I’m open to adoration, just in case the universe thought I wasn’t…totally open to adoration in 2009.
What a sweetie! And in high school?! Amazing…