Valentine’s Day? F That!
Last year I made all of my students chocolate covered pretzels for Valentine’s Day. Having already made them chocolate covered pretzels for Christmas (albeit in different colors), I suppose I shouldn’t have been all that surprised when one of my snarkier teenagers whined, “Chocolate covered pretzels? AGAIN?” But I was surprised. And frankly, I wasn’t all that amused. Especially because I’m the only teacher who takes the time to make anything for my students so you’d think they could at least say “thank you.”
Needless to say, they’re not getting anything this year. Especially as I spent the weekend watching Star Wars with The Wedding Date and trying to wrap my head around the first of the Euro tile-laying (whatever that means) board games to which he’s decided to introduce me.
But my little beach balls are different. They’re getting proper Valentine’s Day cards—every single last one of them—even if it kills me.
Why, you ask, would it kill me? Well, here’s the thing…
Every once in a while I’ll get a call from my mom while she’s out shopping. It usually begins with, “Hey, I’m at Target/Ikea/Five Below” and then turns into “and I just found the cutest stickers/glow-in- the dark necklaces/miniature Nutcrackers. Do you want me to pick them up for your students and if so how many do you need?”
This is how I ended up with two boxes of temporary tattoo Valentine’s Day cards.
Sounds great, right?
Wrong.
The cards are perforated so first you have to tear the little f*ckers apart without tearing them apart. (Can you tell I haven’t done this in a while?) Then you have to tear apart the tattoos, which are about the size and shape of fingernail and hardly worth the effort in my opinion. Next you’ve got to ignore the totally inappropriate Valentine’s Day messages imprinted on each card (“Let’s hang out, Valentine” and “You’re irresistible!”) while inserting the tattoos into little pre-made slits in each card.
Nice, eh?
Then you have to fold them all in half, trying to keep the tattoo from falling out, and finally, last but not least, seal each one with a small red, heart-shaped sticker which was designed—presumably—but someone with very little knowledge of volume or space or whatever it is that would have assured the sticker was actually large enough to hold the card together.
Thankfully I started addressing the cards on Friday.
I’m usually pretty good with arts and crafts (and assembling and addressing 30 Valentine’s Day cards hardly constitutes advanced DIY in my book) so I figured I could finished both classes in about twenty minutes. That, unfortunately, was before I discovered that the Valentine’s Day cards that my mother so eagerly selected for me were actually the Valentine’s Day cards from hell.
Cross your fingers for me, folks. I still have fifteen left to go.
Fieldwork in Stilettos 
12 Responses to “Valentine’s Day? F That!”
I am sure they will appreciate the cards, even if they do not understand the effort you put in to creating them.
You are so good to your students and you just sound like a wonderful teacher! I never had any teacher of mine do anything like that for me, make me food, or cute little cards, all throughout grade school and college. Hopefully it’s not too much of a pain putting it all together, I know it can be quite tedious making cards!
As a teacher who once did such a thing for my babies I laughed out loud! It will mean a lot to them and all the trouble will be worth it.
I guess I should try them out first 😉 Did any of your snarky7 teenagers ask where the pretzels were?
Reminds me of 7 summers of “Slack Oven Kisses”, complete with recipe printed off in “period-correct” font … did you know there was only ONE week where the kids were holy terrors and I didn’t make them?
OMG I remember them! I also remember trying to MAKE them and being totally frustrated by the results! Maybe I’ll have to give it another go one of these days…
Funny! I’ll bet it’s all worth it when you see their faces light up tomorrow. And this year you have a boyfriend for Valentine’s day. Does he feel the pressure?
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F#$king ungrateful teenagers.
[…] night, I was feeling pretty guilty about the fact that I’d let one snarky comment keep me from making my usual chocolate covered pretzels for Valentine’s Day, especially after one […]
Awesome blog but I’m still dbtaeing the ethics of it. Do you tell your match.com daters that you blogged about them? And that this is just something you are doing as an experiment? Do you think you would fall in love? I don’t know I’m just thinking aloud! You can reply via email if you think my post may detract your fans not my intention!Thanks.Y
Hi Sackey– somehow your comment went into my spam folder and I’ve only just now found it 😦 At any rate, yes, I included a link to my profile on my Match.com profile so that anyone who thought they might like to go out with me would know what they were getting themselves into. I didn’t really think I’d fall in love but I was definitely genuinely interested in pursuing a relationship with every man I met… I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens now!