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Elementary schools are infamous for sending kids home with cards and valentine bags made of construction paper and doilies.

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Each February when I was a child, I anticipated receiving a list of all of the names of the students in my class. That meant it was time to write out my valentines!

But what I hated was when I would get a teacher who required that if we handed out any valentines, we had to give them to every kid in the class. If it wasn’t an absolute rule, it was highly encouraged.

That rule wasn’t so bad in the first-grade. I didn’t particularly care for the boy who sat next to me and picked his nose, but I also wasn’t phased by the fact that I had to give him a valentine.

The all or nothing standards really made me mad when I was in about the fourth-grade. There were a few girls who I just didn’t like and I felt like a fake to wish them a Happy Valentine’s Day. And that boy who smelled bad and failed all of his tests? Why in the world would I have wanted to pretend that we were friends?

Once I got to junior high school, the exchange of valentines became scarce. I no longer got to make fancy Valentine’s Day bags of fuchsia envelopes and pink doilies. There were no more class parties with cupcakes and conversation hearts. By the time I was in ninth-grade, we were reading Romeo and Juliet in my advanced English class during February as a celebration. Whoopdie-doo!

As an adult, I enjoy putting up a lighted heart and some other Valentine’s Day decorations in my window at home. I will spend this Valentine’s Day helping my boyfriend move into his new apartment, which is perhaps both a measure of love and a reminder of the responsibilities of adulthood. Valentine’s Day is still special, but not in the same way it was when I was a child.

If I could morph into a child and go back to elementary school for a Valentine’s Day party, I’d enjoy every minute of it and happily drop a valentine into every one of my classmates’ bags - even the boy who smells like old cheese.

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