Nilly - at my school, the student council sells carnations, candy and singing telegrams as a fundraiser. Students can order these things in advance and then they are delivered on Valentine's Day. So, throughout the day, people are getting deliveries. By about 1 or 2, all the deliveries will have been made and some girls will be upset that they did not get anything. My highschool did not do this. At college, different groups sold different things, but it was the same idea.

We had some friends over and they asked if we celebrated - and the true answer is in the " well, it is Valentine's day , so I can't do X I have plans with Dh" Which really means it is a good excuse nto to do anything we don't want to do.

forgot about the in-school flowers thing.

DH will not be home tonight- he left at 6. I have taken 2 naps since he left. I am going to walk to the coffee shop and see if walk+ coffee = staying awake.

The candy and flower grams are $2 at Brendon's school. He considered joining in on the "fun" of sending to and from other kids names, but he values his $2 too much. I would guess that at least half of the purchases are jokes.

Which really means it is a good excuse nto to do anything we don't want to do.

Ha! So true. (Except that this year, we are going out with people, because Kristin will be in town. But normally, it's an excuse to stay home and veg.

I think we had all got our carnations delivered during our homeroom period, so at least there wasn't the torturous wait. That must have been awful. I never didn't get any, thanks to that boy. Also, I think my (girl) friends and I used to send them to each other, too. I'm pretty sure that senior year, every girl got a carnation. I don't know if the teachers chipped in, or what. That was more than half my life ago, now.

Thanks for the explanations.

I'm trying to remember if we had anything similar - as in, something that some gets lots of and some may get none. There was the thing before Purim, in which each person brings a package full of goodies to eat, and they're supposed to get exchanged at random (like pulling numbers from a hat), but this meant that each person who brought a package, got somebody else's package. And, of course, not in the least bit connected to anything romantic. Hmm.

We didn't have in-school flowers, thankfully. There were already plenty of opportunities for humiliation.

You were better off, Nilly. Then you never had to deal with the inevitable "Your best friend gets flowers from the boy you will love 4EVA while she's sitting next to you in Algebra."

Or something.

OTOH, candy!

I'd forgotten all about in-school flowers and how completely awful they were.

I think that this has left residual V-Day dislike for me. You spend years with some little hope that something unexpected and extraordinary will happen and it never does.

Yep.

At my school they let florists deliver to the school, it wasn't a fundraiser or anything, and in the last ten minutes before dismissal, they'd summon everyone who'd received a delivery down to pick them up. Which was pretty much just a public announcement of everyone who currently had a boyfriend.

We did rosegrams on Valentine's in high school, but they were mostly for couples so I never got one.

P. and I did our Fancy Dinner Out for V-Day last night and the reservation was 8:30, so all I saw of the Grammies was the opening medley (Gwen Stefani's outfit was NOT RIGHT, but I loved the suits on the Franz Ferdinand and Maroon 5 boys) and, after we got home, "Across the Universe." I turned it off and went to bed when John Mayer won song of the year -- it probably wasn't the worst song nominated, not with Hooobastank in there, but it still bugs me.