Ever since I was a little child, Valentine’s Day has been my least favorite holiday to celebrate. In elementary school, it was more because I was forced to give sweets and those annoying little Valentine’s cards to everyone in my class, even the ones I didn’t talk to, or didn’t like because then I wouldn’t get any candy, and that’s what it was all about.

Middle school wasn’t too horrible about it. I was relieved I didn’t have to keep giving out those Valentine’s cards, but I was still annoyed that everyone around me suddenly was in love with everyone else that one day of the year.

High school, on the other hand, completely ruined it for me. When Valentine’s Day came around my freshman year of high school, I began to truly despise the day after all of the things I witnessed.

First of all, there were gift exchanges the entire day organized by the student government group. Those weren’t so bad since people attempted to hide their emotions about it; I was just glad I never got anything. Then, there were those dreaded sing-a-grams.

For those who don’t know what on Earth a sing-a-gram is, here it is: the male choir members would go around to classrooms with a selection of love songs to choose from. At the request of the student who had bought the sing-a-gram for their crush, the choir students would interrupt the class, sit the crush down in the middle of the room, and sing them a love song, seemingly to embarrass the crush, but also make them happy that their significant other had done so for them. 

While everyone else found sing-a-grams cute, I wanted to vomit anytime I saw one being given because for someone to go to that kind of length to show their love for someone else in high school is just ridiculous. I always told my friends that if they tried to give me a sing-a-gram, that I would lose it in front of the whole class, yell for the choir members to get the hell out of the room. Then I would probably have never spoken to that friend again, since most of my friends knew that I despised the holiday.

My junior year of high school, it got even worse. The Student Council somehow managed to convince the administration to bring back Hush Hearts and Sssh Shamrocks for Valentine’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day. On Valentine’s Day, every girl in the school would be given a heart to wear around their neck, and boys in the school would try to get them to talk so they could win the girl’s “heart.” Essentially, Hush Hearts was a way for the boys in the school to prove how smooth they were by collecting as many of the girls’ hearts as they could (Sssh Shamrocks was the same thing, but boys had a shamrock around their neck, and the girls had to get them to talk). 

Hush Hearts ultimately ruined Valentine’s Day for me. Since I have a lot of female friends, they would try to be funny and play the game with me when I was trying to have a legitimate conversation with them, even though they knew I had absolutely no interest in playing that pathetic game (I also refused to play Sssh Shamrocks, and threw my Shamrock away before I left my first-hour class both years the game was played).

Now that I’m in college, I don’t know if my opinion about this holiday will change or not. Since I won’t be forced to give anyone anything on Valentine’s Day, and I won’t be surrounded by fake couples giving each a sing-a-gram, or by playing Hush Hearts, I am hoping college will somewhat change my perspective on this holiday that I despise so much. Thursday is the day of course, and I’ll be on campus for the majority of the day, so I guess only time will tell if I will change my attitude about this dreaded holiday.