Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and preparations are being made at school so that you can show your affections to whoever your sweetheart may be. Announcements over the PA in the morning always include “Buy a carnation to show that special someone how much you care!” You walk through the hallways and another advertisement for that special day jumps out at you from garish pink flyers dangling on the walls.

“For only $15, you can buy your sweetheart a singing Valentine!” Oh, those singing Valentines-not some cheesy Hallmark card, but an equally cheesy quartet of high school singers sent to serenade you and present you with a romantic gift of a single red rose. You find the idea sweet but ridiculous. Why would anyone really want that?

Finally, the fated day rolls around. You dress in a pink or red shirt, but not something extravagant enough to seem like you actually care. And you don’t, really. It’s come around enough times that it doesn’t quite hold the glory of your elementary school Valentine’s box party days.

At school the couples hold hands and steal quick kisses in between classes, obviously a flagrant violation of PDA rules. It’s nothing new, but on a day meant for those people it seems disgustingly conspicuous.

Two periods go by and the first one pops into the room. They’re all wearing goofy smiles as they call out the name of the person they’ve come to sing to. All eyes in the class slide to the person belonging to the name like metal to a magnet. If it’s a boy quartet the victim is a girl, and vice versa. Of course, they make him or her stand on a chair in full view of their goggling classmates. A girl, obviously mortified, steps up carefully onto the chair. Her face is aflame and she lets out a nervous giggle, twisting her fingers in the hem of her shirt. When they finish they tell her who sent them, probably her boyfriend. She sits down with her friends, telling them her boyfriend is in for it later, although she is obviously happy.

The boy victim is a different story. He steps up on the chair to the jeers of his joking friends. He has a reputation to keep up, so he makes his face as casual as possible and slouches down to look small. At the last note he hops down and sends back a sharp retort to his friends, beginning to think better of the chocolates and flowers he bought his girlfriend.

The teacher regains control and the embarrassment is forgotten, but it happens several more times throughout the day. Each time you feel a dreadful foreboding as they call the name, relieved when it isn’t yours. Still, you feel the thrill of anticipation deep in your stomach. You hate to admit it, but you kind of wish that that gaudy, silly singing group had come for you. You feel that slight sliver of hope that the words “Let me call you sweetheart, I’m in love with you,” weaving together in a melodious harmony, is a gift just for you. That someone cares enough about you to do something that embarrasses you to the ends of the earth but still means so much.

The final bell rings, and you push that microscopic hope far away so that all you feel is relief you didn’t get a singing Valentine.

You ride the bus home, finally free from all the adoring couples that haunted you, acutely aware of being single, all day. Maybe your parents exchange gifts, but that doesn’t bother you so much. They’re your parents, after all.

You do some homework and go to bed, kind of but not really sad about your singing Valentine that never came. Oh well, you think. Valentine’s Day is overrated anyway.