Forcing the Valentine's Day Love

I cannot be the only one…who lives in a house ran by boys and who knows that, even with their brawny efforts, making Valentine’s Day anything other than a run-of-the-mill Friday will be up to me, and this includes the Sonny Boy’s valentine exchange at school.

I started asking the very indecisive Sonny Boy what type of valentine he would like to hand out to his classmates as soon as I saw them popping up at the stores (you know, approximately the day after Christmas). With more than one Target in our neighborhood, the choices are close to limitless, Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I have even seen a mustache themed box of valentines.  In typical Sonny Boy fashion, he showed no interest in my suggestions, and with ample time still available before V-Day, I let it go, planning on returning to this inquiry at a later date.

When the list of names (that was incomplete, by the way, sorry to the kids the teacher forgot to include) and information concerning how the kindergarten class gets down for Valentine's Day came home in Sonny Boy’s backpack a week ago, I bridged the valentine choice gap again. I began naming off ridiculous character themed valentines that have no business clogging up my brain for to him to choose from.  Again, no choice was made.

I can already see the storm clouds rolling in over the dinning room table, where I am going to have to practically sit on Sonny Boy’s lap and hold his pencil wielding hand to write the To’s and From’s on these silly pieces of heart laden paper to make this happen. This valentine exchange tradition mixed with my Sonny Boy's complete lack of enthusiasm is not lovely or charming, it’s annoying.  The darlings in his classroom are not looking forward to receiving a Valentine from old lady Sonny Boy, they want candy hearts with ridiculous text message abbreviations on them (“LOL” and “TXT ME”), not my handwriting and possible red wine spills.

This Valentine's Day, when you are emptying your precious little one’s backpack of all the paper hearts and red lollies that stain their newly forming teeth, take a minute and remember all the other parents that also had to force their children to print their shaky handwriting on all this Valentine's Day stuff and know you are definitely not the only one who had to force the love.

What happened to the classic valentine?