Memoirs of an Insane Freshman Girl

Chapter 12: February 14, 2008

Chapter 12: February 14, 2008


         As you all should know, February 14th is Valentine’s Day, and this year’s couldn’t have been more different than my past Valentine’s Day.  First of all, I must start off my saying that I am completely anti-Valentine’s Day.  Of course, that’s only because I’ve been in that whole I’m-pissed-off-because-I-don’t-have-a-boyfriend mood my entire life leading up to this point.  Basically, I was just so pessimistic that I didn’t believe in love anymore and mostly didn’t want to see other people liking each other and being happy.  It’s not like I’m even stretching the truth or exaggerating because that’s exactly the way I was then.  *On another side note, I cannot recall the actual date on which Chris asked me out.  I think it was a Friday and sometime in February, but other than that, I’m pretty lost.  Now, normally, that would make a pretty bad girlfriend or just insanely forgetful, but it didn’t make me feel bad that I didn’t remember the date or couldn’t pinpoint any of our anniversaries because I knew Chris didn’t remember either.  He wasn’t one of those guys who counted the days he had been going out with a girl or made a big deal out of anniversaries.  I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it either, which is probably why we were so perfect for each other.  We wanted the same things, relationship-wise, and everything just seemed to work out perfectly—hence the seemed because eventually it had to end.* As I’m assuming Chris asked me sometime in February and we weren’t officially going out on Valentine’s Day, then it must have been after February 14th. 
         
As most people are all happy being in love and having boyfriends, I was angry and decided that I was going to wear black on Valentine’s Day.  My sister and a couple of my girlfriends—all of us boyfriend-less—decided to join me in my protest against people in love. To fully understand my freshmen year Valentine’s Day, I must insert the information about our school literary magazine.  *Insert gasp here!  Inserted rock!* *No, you are not supposed to understand that unless you are one certain chica. * Once I met Carla, I quickly found out that she was as interested in writing as I was.  When she informed me of the school literary magazine club, I was definitely interested in joining.  The club was sponsored by one of my Lit/Comp teachers, Mrs. W, and Mr. K, another English teacher.  *As much as I hate to write this, Mr. K tragically passed away sophomore year at the age of thirty-five because of heart complications when he lay down to sleep one day and never woke up.  He had a ten-month old son that will never get to know him, and his wife of only a few years will be forever in grief.  I never had Mr. K as a teacher, but I got to know him through the literary magazine club, Proxima, and I know he will be missed by all of his family, friends, and McCluer North faculty and students.*
         
Mrs. W really wasn’t that much a part of Proxima because she was pretty busy running the school book club.  Mr. K was basically the only sponsor, and we all congregated in his classroom once a week to discuss ideas for names and the layout of the magazine.  This relates to Valentine’s Day because we decided to sell Val-a-grams for Valentine’s Day.  Basically, we designed and printed out Valentine’s Day cards that we would then attach with suckers and hand-deliver to the recipients that they were sent to by those buying the cards.  We had always sold those in my Catholic grade school to raise money for student council; so, we decided to take the idea and run with it.  It was really hectic and stressful those few days before Valentine’s Day trying to find people’s schedules; so, we could deliver them.  We had printed lines on the back of the card; so, the buyer of the card could write down any classes they knew that the recipient had.  Unfortunately for us, barely anyone wrote down or knew any of the classes of the people they were sending the Val-a-grams to; so, we ended up having to spend hours looking up people’s schedules.  We swore we would never do that again, but I’m sure we’ll do it again next year anyway. 
         
After all our hard work, Valentine’s Day came around, the day for us to hand-deliver these cards.  We had previously organized them by hours; so, it was supposedly efficient.  Mr. K gave us all signed passes that excused us from our classes that day.  We came to school all dressed up in our black attire, armed with bottles of pink hair spray.  My sister sprayed everyone’s hair; so, now we were all dressed in black with pink hair or highlights.  I must say that pink highlights did look really sweet on my dark brown hair.  We went around handing out our Val-a-grams, and we usually finished each hour with at least twenty or so minutes to spare left in the hour.  Most of the hours, we spent our time hanging out in the stairways, just talking, or in the cafeteria. 
         
We couldn’t hand out the Val-a-grams during 5th hour because of the lunch schedule and the fact that some people skipped their 5th hour anyway to go to lunch.  My friends and I decided to be rebellious and leave school.  We all crammed into my sister’s car and ducked down in the seats as my sister casually drove out of the student parking lot.  We wanted lunch; so, we went to McDonalds.  We arrived about five minutes before they started serving lunch.  None of us wanted breakfast; so, we had to wait until we could get real food.  When we’re standing in line to order, of all people in the world, my mom walks in.  She asks us why we’re not in school, and we tell her how we’re delivering the Val-a-grams.  She doesn’t end up even really caring that we were at McDonalds when we should have been at school.