So, I wrote a column a couple of weeks ago about how my husband and I don’t exchange valentine cards any more, and guess what I got?
A card.
He said it didn’t count because it was a free American Heart Association card that came in the mail. He stuck it in my insulated lunch bag when he packed my Lean Cuisine and dark-chocolate Hershey’s kisses, standard fare for my lunch every day.
The card … it had something sweet written on it …
When I got home, he was making chocolate-dipped strawberries, which I love. Then I noticed he was making a cheese ball that I have become addicted to since my sister-in-law made one at Christmas.
However, this was a cheese heart. He flattened it into a heart shape. Betcha I’m the only woman in the world who got one of those for Valentine’s Day.
I checked with some of my co-workers about how the day of romance went with their significant others.
My young newly engaged co-worker said her fiance left his home at 5:30 or so in the afternoon, after having been off work half a day on Valentine’s Day, and told his fiancee he was going to get dog food.
Good thing — he was going to be in the dog house later.
She said she knew immediately that he was going to mill around the picked-over card-and-candy aisle with the other pitiful men.
When he got home, he had purchased a little pot of what he thought were roses (they were tulips), a bag of Milky Way candy bars and a card. Just a card. The envelope had blown out of his sack. “He did write something really sweet in it, but …” she said.
I asked, just to be fair, what she had gotten him. A card and a little bucket filled with valentine candy.
I’ve never heard of a guy getting mad about what he did or didn’t get for Valentine’s Day, though.
A young reporter was thrilled with what her boyfriend of 10 months had done for her, although it was two days early.
He also works for the newspaper, so his excuse for not being able to take her out on the actual holiday was legitimate — he had to cover the state wrestling tournament. You get used to these things when you work for a newspaper.
He made up for it, though, by buying her daisies, a Beatles album to replace the one she has that’s scratched, dinner at a really nice restaurant and a movie.
She was gushing. “I had a great Valentine’s Day, and I saw just how awesome my boyfriend really is,” she said. Awww.
Another co-worker has a unique situation because her boyfriend lives in Japan.
She said Valentine’s Day is different there. The girl gives a guy chocolates, and then on March 14, White Day, he gives her chocolates.
I like that. It’s not Valentine’s Day without chocolate. I bought two bags on sale, which I have hidden for my own consumption. After making myself sick on fun-size Hershey bars last week, I decided I’m going to give the rest to my husband to take to his college classes.
A male co-worker probably gets the prize.
He already had bought his wife a couple of presents, and she loves butterflies, so he bought her some clothes with that motif. To her surprise, he had taken off Valentine’s Day to spend with her. He got up to make her breakfast, but they were out of sausage and bacon.
She gave him something all right — a stomach bug.
He said she started feeling sick and spent two days with the virus, which he then got.
He did get her a late Valentine’s Day card that said, “I love you … because you don’t have cooties.”
He said he wrote that he was “taking that statement back,” referring to the cooties.
“So much for romantical,” he said.
Yeah, I’ll take a heart-shaped cheese ball and a free card any day.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.