February 14, 2000

So, I suppose you all know that today is Valentine's Day. It's the fifth Valentine's Day that I've known Keith.

The first year, I was a freshman in the dorms, and the week of Valentine's Day I got a package in the mail. It was from Victoria's Secret. It was the first romantic present anyone had ever got me. I loved it so much, and I felt bad, because I didn't know he was going to send me something and I hadn't sent him anything. I told Kiriko down the hall about it and she thought it was the best present ever, too, and demanded to see it, and I showed her and she agreed that it was just great.

The second year, nothing. We were "off" again.

The third year, nothing again. Still "off".

The fourth year, I was a senior living off-campus in my own apartment. I came home from class one day to find a note tacked to the security door. It read:

"I came home and found a woman about 5'3", African-American, short curly hair, wearing a blue windbreaker, rooting through the packages inside the security door. If anyone sees this person, please do not let her inside the building. Jan Bednarczuk's package appears to have been completely destroyed."

Ack! MY package! I ran inside and grabbed it, and sure enough, the end had been torn off, but luckily nothing had been stolen. Inside was a box of homemade cookies and a signed Howard Waldrop book. I was so happy. My sweetie sent me cookies that he made himself, and a book by one of our favorite authors. It was just as romantic as the lingerie, but in a different way.

This year, I got Keith his present first. It was the Oyster Boy book by Tim Burton, and a bag of candy from the Sweet Factory. The Sweet Factory is one of those places where they have bulk candy in bins. I got Keith a bag filled with exactly one piece of candy from each bin. I did it because three years ago, when he was visiting me in Chicago once, we went to FAO Schweetz (another bulk candy type place) and I was dithering over which black licorice candy to get, and he said, "Let's get them all!", and we got exactly one piece of every kind of black licorice candy.

Keith liked his gift a lot.

He got ME a 1000-piece glow in the dark jigsaw puzzle of the astrological spheres. It looks REALLY hard. He said that he wanted to get us a puzzle that would be very challenging, but that we would want to put on the wall after it was completed. I told him that he had succeeded admirably. It's a very romantic present, because a 1000-piece puzzle means that we'll be spending hours upon hours together working on it.

I had a great Valentine's Day weekend. Besides the presents, we also went out for steak on Friday night, and we went to Keith's company holiday party on Saturday night and did some dancing, and then we saw Toy Story 2 on Sunday. And it was all very sweet and romantic, because Keith is my special sweetheart and there's nobody like him in the whole wide world.

THE FORUM: Talk about how your Valentine's Day celebration went. Alternatively, talk about how much I make you want to hurl.

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