Final Thoughts: She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not
I wish I had a nickel for every minute I’ve spent pondering Valentine’s gifts. I can’t begin to guess how many times I have stood in some store aisle, lost in a brown study, trying to decide on that perfect present. I can hear someone thinking right now, “Doofus, you should have done your research before you went to the store! Looked at some catalogs or something.” To which I would reply, “I did, I knew exactly what I wanted to get my sweetie when I left the house but when I got to the store there were so many other things to look at — perfumes, bath oils, lotions, and all kinds of pretty things — that, well, what I had in mind didn’t seem so hot after all.”
I have also read — in this very magazine — about how great gifts come from knowing your sweetheart well enough to know what she or he really wants and needs and would love to receive. Well, that’s fine, but while I think I know mine pretty well, shopping invariably makes my head spin.
So, there I have stood, weighing so many questions: Fanciful? Practical? Cute? (And just let me say this about cute: no woman I have ever known interprets cute the way I do. Many years ago, perusing a clothes catalog, I spotted something that struck my fancy, something I considered mysterious, perhaps playful. I said, “What do you think of this?” My beloved said, “It’s … ummm … cute.” Had I been tasked to make a 50-word outfit adjective list, ranging from adventurous to zazzy, I don’t think cute would have occurred to me).
I’ve tried to pinpoint when my Valentine-buying indecisiveness began. I was 13 or 14. One fall, I developed my hugest crush ever on a pretty girl who was a few months older than I, several inches taller, and years ahead in maturity. I had much to overcome.
Not to mention that I was shy and awkward, often knocking over things.
She had a brother close to our age and lived in a subdivision two miles from my house. Their home was a kid magnet, and many afternoons there was a football game in their backyard. I regularly rode my bicycle over there to just be in the vicinity when a game was getting organized, and sometimes while we grimy boys played she would come out and twirl her baton. If I was lucky, she would still be twirling when the game broke up and I’d get a chance to say “Hey!” and occasionally she would invite me inside for a glass of ice water, which I would nurse while we talked about things like how mean our history teacher was or who was better, the Beatles or the Stones? Sadly, my tracking in dirt and tendency to knock over things soon had her mother ban me from ever coming beyond the carport.
Winter ended the backyard football and my excuses to just show up. By February, I was desperate to win the girl’s affection, so on Valentine’s Day my mother drove me to a drug store, where we shelled out something like $3.95 for the biggest, fanciest heart-shaped box of candy in the place. Once home, I got on my bike and hauled that box to my would-be girlfriend’s house, a challenge on a bicycle with high-rise handlebars and no basket. It was a bitterly cold day.
When she opened the carport door, she was gleeful. She cradled the box and said no one had ever given her anything like that. But when I suggested I come in to help her sample the candy (a suave idea I had filed away years earlier, maybe inspired by Eddie Haskell in “Leave It to Beaver”), her mom said no. The next morning the girl brought four pieces of candy in a sandwich bag and unceremoniously gave them to me in science class. And that was pretty much the end of that.
So, maybe that’s where my Valentine’s indecisiveness began. Whatever the case, if you’re looking for great Valentine’s ideas you won’t find them here. Now, I can give you some good bad ideas, including:
- Artificially-sweetened candy.
- Books on weight-loss, personal finance and Eastern philosophy.
- Vacuum cleaner.
- Hammer.
- Socket-wrench set.
- Various plastic devices designed to help one lie on the floor and tighten those abs; the last such device got more use as a snow saucer.
Oh, and if you can help me understand cute, I would appreciate any and all counsel.
