Whatever You Do, Don’t Wait Until Closing Time

Get ready to seek shelter.

We’re just a few days away from the annual observance when a naked baby flies around shooting innocent people with a bow and arrow.

It’s the day when you cannot get within a mile of a restaurant — especially a pricey one.

It’s the day when young men buy their mates candy, jewelry, flowers, cards, balloons and unmentionables as tokens of their everlasting love. 

Well, the unmentionables are really rookie mistake gifts as far as romantic gift giving goes. But as Lewis Grizzard used to say, this is a family newspaper, so I’ll not mention them.

Did you see what I did there?

I’ve been a front-line worker on Valentine’s Day.

For a couple of years a long time ago, Kim and I owned a balloon store. We both had day jobs; the store was just a little piece of self-inflicted misery we fooled with for awhile.

We had an employee who ran the store.

We all worked on Valentine’s Day, though.

As you know, Valentine’s Day makes or breaks a business like that.

The commotion would start in early February when people started placing orders.

Those were the thoughtful people who plan ahead and take things like that seriously.

Those were the women.

Valentine’s Day in a balloon store is a 12-hour frenzy of frantic men breaking through the door looking for anything red.

You have not seen real desperation on someone’s face until you see a guy in a balloon store 5 minutes before closing on Valentine’s Day.

I could’ve tied a balloon on a can of red kidney beans, slapped $13.99 on it, and some schmuck would’ve bought it.

The Valentine’s Day after we sold the store, we ate lunch in the car in the parking lot of a balloon store just so we could enjoy not being in the melee.

Back when I was in elementary school, Valentine’s Day was always a big deal.

Beginning a few days before, we made homemade cards for our mothers using red construction paper and lace.

I wasn’t really interested in the art project, but it beat long division by a mile.

Of course, elementary school Valentine’s Day parties are always a sugar-filled fest. I happily partook in my fair share.

One year, I either forgot to remind mama to buy me a box of Valentines, or I left them at home. But somehow, I made it to school Valentine-less.

This is quite the faux pas for a 10-year-old.

Fortunately, we were at the age when some people still wrote in pencil, so when someone gave me one written in pencil, I would merely erase the names and fill them out myself.

It worked perfectly except for one thing.

Since nobody gave me one with a sucker, I didn’t have a sucker to give the girl of my dreams.

Every box of Valentines back then came with one sucker which always went to the dreamboats in the class.

Of course, getting the sucker was runner-up to a heart-shaped box of 6 chocolates, but it was clearly better than just getting a can of red kidney beans with a balloon tied to it.