There is nothing as painful as trying to help a six-year-old boy make valentines for his kindergarten class. Helping Kenny make valentines is like saying nineteen Hail Marys on your knees while crawling uphill.
“But I don’t want to give Craig a valentine,” Kenny complained. “He fights with me!”
I began with gentle encouragement.
I explained that everyone, Craig included, needed a valentine.
Knowing that the nearby television show he was watching was quickly sucking him in, I drove my point home by loudly spelling out Craig’s name while furiously tapping the table with my finger.
Shaking his head he rebooted, “But he fights with everyone!”
Therein lies the problem.
I empathize with Kenny. Giving valentines to people you don’t want to seems to defeat the entire purpose of Valentine’s Day. Even I had a valentine stuck to the refrigerator that I bought for John several days before. Like Kenny, I wanted to blurt out, “But John fights with me!”
But it wasn’t really even the fighting that caused my card to remain unsigned. It wasn’t that I didn’t want John to be my valentine; it was just the culmination of the previous few days along with a few minor skirmishes had put me in an anti-Cupid sort of way.
We were on day five of what seemed like a never-ending stomach virus that Max had unleashed the previous weekend. Kenny and I were just recovering, which explains why he wasn’t in school and why we were hastily putting together valentines with his classroom party only hours away. At that moment, it felt like there would be no end to the plague. In fact, the last time I had checked on Stancey, she was hanging off the side of her bed with her head in a bucket.
It’s hard to conjure up pixie dust and hearts when your house smells like raw sewage and Parmesan cheese; and getting my son to create a Craigentine was turning out to be equally difficult. The more I fought, the more I thought about how Valentine’s Day is when you’re young. When I was in elementary school, I worried that no one would give me a valentine. It also made me remember it was one of those few times when it was perfectly acceptable to be passive aggressive.
Those I liked got nice valentines and those I didn’t …
It was about then I blurted to Kenny what no mother ever should.
“Just pick out an ugly valentine and put his name on it. NOW!!”
And so he did.
Turns out, after all that work, Kenny wound up missing his party anyway. John dropped him off at school at noon, and wouldn’t you know it? They had the damn party in the morning.
On a side, there is such a thing as a karmic valentine. I did wind up signing and embellishing the beautiful valentine I bought John. And waiting for me after work was a homemade card from him.
Those ugly valentines have a way of catching up with you.
At least it wasn't pornographic!
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