happy valentine's day...

hmmm, im not bitter about valentine's day.  i think there are worse things we can spend our time on than trying to show someone we care about them.  however on the drive to work this morning i recalled memories from childhood.  primarily elementary school valentine's day traditions.  making the bright red giant envelopes for the front of your desks in school to collect all the valentine's you will get from your classmates.  the anticipation of what might be there after all the cards and tokens were delivered over lunch hour.  and then i realized, with horrifying clarity, how this tradition thus perpetuated the caste society we were later to encounter in high school... all the pretty and popular and beautiful girls and boys receiving the overflowing tokens of "will you be my valentine?" and "would you be mine?"... i was not pretty, popular or beautiful.  i was awkward and strange and quite ugly... i remember watching them (i'm sure my imagination is being melodramatic in some ways) and seeing the air about them change and soaking in the attention.  who wouldn't?  i am not really going anywhere with this post.  i am just recounting these weird childhood flashbacks.  how strange life is.  how bizarre our culture is.  and how young we begin this torturous journey.