Today is Valentines Day, that special day—which someone, somewhere, at sometime in history—designated as “The One Day” when lovers, both actual and wannabe, would lavish one another with gifts, chocolates, romantic getaways, and elaborate cards in order to demonstrate their undying devotion and affection. Of course, we all know its really all about commercialism and consumerism at its very best, but I won’t go there. Instead, although I will probably receive hate mail for saying something so blasphemous, I am going to tell you why I think Valentines Day should be erased from the calendar.

The truth is, when it comes to holidays, February 14 is right there at the bottom of my list, although perhaps a step above Presidents Day and Columbus Day, both of which could also be eliminated from the calendar and not be missed, at least in my opinion. And why, you ask, do I detest Valentines Day?

Well, I believe my aversion dates back to elementary school, which for me was M. P. Word, in Fairburn, Georgia, where the principal, Mrs. Jones, had bright orange hair and wielded a Bolo Paddle like Mickey Mantel wielded a bat when he stepped up to home plate; and believe me, Ms. Jones made many a student rue the day he or she had ever misbehaved in her school. Anyway, that’s beside the point. As I was about to say, my aversion to Valentines Day probably began there, and here’s why:

Usually about a week before the Big Day, we children had to bring shoeboxes from home; and for our arts-and-crafts project, we would cut a mail-slot in the end of the box then proceed to decorate our box with colored paper, cutouts, ribbons, glitter, and other garish adornments. Then, once our boxes were sufficiently tacky, we would line them up in alphabetical order on a shelf at the rear of the classroom, which is where those boxes would sit—silent, empty, waiting, and molting—until Valentines Day.

And when that day arrive, after the teacher blew the starting whistle (yes, that’s right—a whistle), we would charge up to those boxes, with their gaping mouths, and begin shoving in our cards to one another; and that is where the problem really began. See, for one, it was obvious the kids from rich families were handing out the best cards, whereas we children from poor families were handing out cards from those inexpensive books of cards one could buy at Vicker’s 5 & 10 on Main Street; and although the books contained a good many cards, those cards were really, well, quite dinky. So, of course, we poorer kids were all eyeballing the richer kids to see if any of them were going to put one of their fancy cards into our box; and if they didn’t, we immediately knew we were not among the “chosen few.” In fact, we knew we were nobody—a zilch, a zero on the face of the universe—and that was extremely damaging to our already low self-esteem.

The other problem was how some kids were more popular than others, regardless of their family’s wealth or lack thereof, and would naturally receive more cards—elaborate and not so elaborate—than the less popular kids. Like Horace Ringo (name changed to protect the guilty), his daddy was out of work more often than not and drank like a fish, but Horace was bigger than any other boy in the class (he’d been held back two grades), so the younger boys (rich and poor alike) were afraid of him and didn’t want to make him mad, so they usually filled his flamboyantly tasteless box with all kinds of cards. As for the girls, well, we didn’t much care for Horace, but we were also intimidated by his sheer bulk and height, so we always dropped in at least two cards, rather like an offering to some pagan god whom we wanted to appease. Anyway, the point is how the most popular kids’ boxes were always filled to overflowing with valentines adorned with hearts, flowers, and cupids while the boxes of the less popular kids contained perhaps a dozen or so saccharine sentiments on cardboard—that is, if we were lucky. And that is where my aversion to Valentines Day was fostered—back there in elementary school.

On the other hand, things are quite different today, or so I surmise based upon an article I read in the paper a few days ago. It seems that today’s educators are mindful of children’s fragile self-esteem and, therefore, aware of how devastating it can be for one child to receive either more or better cards than his or her classmates on Valentines Day. As a result, many school have either entirely banned Valentines Day or else changed the rules so that every child has to bring a card for every other child in his or her class; moreover, the cards they distribute must not demonstrate any favoritism, meaning no one card can be more elaborate than another.

So, I guess the question is, if I were a child growing up today would I still grow up to become an adult who thought Valentines Day should be eliminated from the calendar? Heck if I know, but I think I probably would since, being a thinking person as well as a liberal, I would probably still see the day as being all about commercialism and consumerism and having very little—if anything—to do with love. After all, in my opinion, if you love someone—really love him or her—you should demonstrate and celebrate that love each and every day of the year.