W

hen 
I 
think 

of 
Valentine’s 

Day, I think of a 

hard-shelled, cherry-red, Sa-
ran-wrapped version of love 
that bores cavities in your teeth 
and sits on your tongue like the 
aftermath of a bad French kiss.

I think of the time in middle 

school when I made a list of 
my “future boyfriends” using a 
pink piece of construction pa-
per and red crayola marker, and 
I think about the freckle-faced 
love interest who picked it up 
and then forced me to confess 
my feelings for him the next 
period. I think of the hundreds 
of elementary worksheets van-
dalized by my semi-psycho rep-
etitions of “Mrs. Grace Smith,” 
adopting the surname of which-
ever dimpled specimen I decid-
ed I was in love with on that 
given weekday. I think of entire 
lunch periods spent with other 
pony-tailed fourth graders pas-
sionately debating which Drew 
was the more “attractive Drew” 
in our class (I oscillated teams 
constantly). 

There was always a certain 

level of embarrassment that 
came with that hallowed day 
in mid-February, when teach-
ers and real, grown adults fash-
ioned love into platonic paper 
crafts, like you hadn’t spent ev-
ery second of your adolescence 
thinking about just that: boys 
and crushes and this Drew or 
that one. 

Much like the blaring beat of 

silence that comes when teach-
ers announce they’re expecting 
a baby — each student realizing 

what step was taken to get to 
that bit of news — the launch 
of private, romantic affairs into 
public consciousness is awk-
ward. And in middle school, 
Valentine’s Day was a whole 
day of just that.

I first experienced the sick-

ening embarrassment of being 
crushed on publicly in fifth 
grade, when a pale and freck-
le-faced boy named Liam con-
fessed his love for me via a 
stack of valentines. The mess 
of red paper slips, overflow-
ing like confetti from my glit-
tered Valentine’s Day box, was 
an adorable stream of boyish 
consciousness. His endearingly 
scribbled handwriting read:

“I like you so much, Grace.”
“I like your eyes, Grace.”
“Do 
you 
like 
me 
back? 

Choose: Yes or No.”

“Will you be my valentine?”
It should have been my dream 

come true: A boy was pouring 
his heart out for me — he was 
maxing out my Valentine’s Day 
box in just the perfect way, my 
desk showered with enough 
notes of affection to make a sin-
gle girl cry.

But I could not have been 

more appalled. All I wanted to 
do was tear each valentine one 
by one, ridding myself of any 
speck of Liam’s affection that 
remained on that desk. 

Maybe it was a mixture of 

embarrassment, confused feel-
ings and being confronted with 
a tsunami of real-life boy atten-
tion I had yet to receive as an 
adolescent. But either way, the 
essential truth is this: The in-

troduction of the private, Liam 
and my enduring flame of love, 
into the public, Mrs. Parker’s 
fifth-grade classroom, was a 
wildly uncomfortable affair.

And thus, we arrive at the 

dreaded Valentine’s Day par-
adox: the idea of a collective 
day when private celebration is 
thrusted into public conscious-
ness and punctuated by obtru-
sive spells of commodification 
all the while. It’s brutal. 

Originally founded in Chris-

tian and ancient Roman tradi-
tions, the romantic sentiment 
associated 
with 
Valentine’s 

Day was made tangible begin-
ning in the 15th century, when 
written notes were traded to 
convey affection. Then, in the 
1840s, a woman named Esther 
Howland, now revered as the 
“Mother of the Valentine,” be-
gan to mass-produce those cov-

eted greeting cards, finally lib-
erating us from the burden of 
having to put our thoughts to 
pen and paper. 

Around this same time, Val-

entine’s Day was in the process 
of being rebranded. An 1849 
edition of Graham’s American 
Monthly harnessed the day’s 
full capitalist potential: “St. 
Valentine’s day...is becoming, 
nay, it has become a national 
holyday.” 

And thus, Feb. 14 had turned 

into a whole new woman: Sud-
denly, drugstores were stocked 
with pastel-colored valentines, 
a Bostoner invented the be-
loved Necco candy hearts and 
holiday merchandise in an ar-
ray of blushed tones littered 
store windows. 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
statement

COVID, stupid, love

BY GRACE TUCKER, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY

Wednesday, February 10th, 2021 — 3A

Read more at 
MichiganDaily.com

