Happy Valentine's Day!

"Valentine's Day sucks."  "Forever Alone."  "I hate Valentine's Day."

In third grade, I had a crush on this boy in my class.  He had dark hair, had a bigger build, spoke Spanish when he thought no one was listening, and his desk was right across from mine.  I thought he was cute!  I decided to make a card for him.  But not just any old card.  No.  I decided to make a fateful card that would be given to him on that fateful day in third grade.  A Secret Admirer Card.  (Dun dun duuun....).  I was going to day care at my grandma's house at the time and she liked to make cards, so I used some of her supplies.  I made a card with a hedgehog on it.  I punched out hearts, I colored in the hedgehog I stamped on the front, I wrote in awkward cursive:

Dear C,

May your day be full of surprises!

Love,

Your Secret Admirer

I thought I was being poetic.  I was proud of myself.  I kept the card in my folder and made absolute sure that I remembered to take it with me when I went to school.  I handed out my Valentine's to everyone in the class, C included, and then I got my teacher to help me distract C so that I could put my special card in his bag.  Her plan worked and surprisingly, no one saw me.

We all dumped out our bags and started looking through all of our Valentine's, sifting through the candy and colorful pieces of paper.  He spotted my envelope.  It was not like the other Valentine's in his bag.  He slit open the envelope and read the card out loud with a group of his friends.  (I felt stupid as he read it out loud... I hated what I wrote in the card, but I knew it was too late).  His friends were laughing at him as he frantically tried to figure out who had sent him this card.  He accused the girl next to me, LT, but she was adamant that this card wasn't from her.  They had seen her write in cursive, but they hadn't seen me.

At the end of the day, the mystery still wasn't solved.  I was so excited, I just had to tell him.  I pulled him aside and said, "C, I sent The Note."  He nodded at this and walked away.  A week or two later, I decided that I wanted a response, so when I told him again (I'm so stupid) he said, "I don't want girls to like me."  He walked away.  I broke down in tears.

From third grade to eighth grade, he avoided me whenever he possibly could.  When I'd sit next to him, he'd switch seats.  When it came to choosing a high school, we were initially going to the same school, but I'm convinced that he switched schools when he realized we would be in the same building for another four years.

First crushes suck...

Fast forward to October of ninth grade.  I meet this neat guy.  He has brown hair, he's freakishly tall, he's a talented artist and he folds a lot of airplanes.  I ask him to Sadie Hawkins.  He said 'yes.'  Two months later, he asks me out.  I said 'yes.'  Over four years later, we're still going very strong!  I foresee a long future ahead of us.  Valentine's Day is no longer a traumatic time for me (I'm using 'traumatic' loosely here) and it's actually one of my favorite days of the year!  I couldn't be happier to have found my special someone :)

So no matter if you've found The One, are still looking around, or have no interest whatsoever in this kind of thing and whether you like this day or not, I wish you a Happy Valentine's Day!  It's a day to celebrate those you love, so go remind those you love (family, friends, etc.) that you're thinking about them!

Thanks for Reading!

--Jude