A primary school in Somerset (South of England) has banned Valentine’s Day cards from the premises.  The headmaster, Mr Turner, told parents that cards declaring love can be “confusing” for children under the age of 11, who are still emotionally and socially developing.

Call me a killjoy but I’m with Mr Turner.  I’ve always hated Valentine’s Day and am still haunted by  memories of the popular girls at primary school counting their cards in class.  One year a little girl called Emily Pattinson got nine.  Seventy percent of the boys in our class sent her a Valentine’s Day card! I got one card that year from my dad. He signed it ‘To my little princess, Happy Valentine’s Day darling, love Daddy’. I remember thinking “Great! Can’t even pretend it’s from a boy.”

The next Valentine’s Day to stand out in my mind was during the first year of middle school when I was 10 years old. My best friend at the time was Nicola Booth and it was the first Valentine’s Day that we both had ‘boyfriends’. Nicola’s boyfriend was Blinky Paul and I was dating his best friend Irish Glenn. We were pretty serious, you know we had done stuff like ride to town on the bus together, held hands a few times and the four of us had watched Mutant Ninja Hero Turtles at the cinema twice. So when Valentine’s Day came along Nic and I were both really excited about buying cards. I put a lot of thought into mine and eventually decided on a red card with brown monkeys on the front personalising it with a cheesy roses are red, violets are blue type poem.

That year (1990) the 14th February fell on a Wednesday and the first lesson of the day was English. Nic and I were naturally feeling a little apprehensive about handing over our cards so we decided to half the embarrassment and present each others. She went first and what happened next changed my perspective on Valentine’s Day forever.  First I heard a group of boys are making ‘upchuck’ noises and then saw my mokey card making it’s way back to me all ripped up, still in it’s envelope.  To top off the morning, Nic and I then had a blow-up because she obviously, like any right minded person, didn’t want me to give Blinky Paul her card. Can’t really blame her, can you?

Not long after that, Irish Glenn left the UK to go back to Ireland. I just tried to find him on facebook to see what kind of grown up he’s become. He’s not on there or on Friends Re-united or Twitter. I like to think he flunked school and he’s too thick to work a computer. Either way, I’m pretty confident that my life is going better than his but I do wonder if the monkey card ripping incident will cross his mind tomorrow? I doubt it!

In a nutshell that’s why I’m with Mr Turner on his Valentine’s Day card ban. May no little girl this year suffer the shame I did in 1990.

Geordiebird

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