My Valentine’s Days have usually been single awareness days. It’s a day for those with relationships. And yet, I still like Valentine’s Day.
As a single male, and with no girlfriend at that time each year, it was the one day I could justifiably take a day off from weekend dating without feeling any regret, whatsoever. Then I saw the day from the single girl’s perspective.
One year a leader of single adults in my church was asking me what I was doing for Valentine’s Day. I told him my philosophy and that I would enjoy taking it easy that day. He lamented that their were several girls that day who would feel sad and not feel loved.
It wouldn’t be genuine for me to take them on a date and pretend like we were in love. Thankfully, I did have a few successful attempts at showing interest in innocent, bashful kinds of ways on Valentine’s Days through the years, but that mostly in grade school. Most of the time since I didn’t even have a prospect with whom I wanted to hint at that I would like to be her not-so-secret admirer. I thought of how women probably are not that excited to receive Valentine’s Day recognition as a sympathy gesture, especially if it came from the urging of married leadership.
Still, something would have to be better than nothing. That year, on the night before Valentine’s Day, was the worst snow storm I remember experiencing in Utah. It stranded me, and all my neighbors coming home from work, on Main Street in Lehi, UT for five hours. I had enough gas but I was getting hungry. I couldn’t eat the Valentine’s Day candy. I checked my trunk and found some dried out crackers. Yuck! Then I opened the back door to look for any other morsels stashed away. The balloons all started flying out. I lost half of them to the blowing wind. The person behind me was laughing at that. I did manage to attach one balloon per candy bag and delivered them at 2AM.
