Valentine’s Day – Get the Lead Out

Kids today have it better than ever before, right? Hang around folks who are older than you, and that mantra will get repeated as if there’s no room for debate on the matter. Without fail, past generations always had it rougher as kids – they had to walk uphill in the snow to school every day, they never got anything good for Christmas, and they had to get proctology exams with nothing more than a flashlight and a stick. Oh, and back then kids got proctology exams.

And yet generation after generation simultaneously thinks every facet of life was better when they were young. Music was better, movies were better, schools were run more efficiently, elected officials were more competent, sports were played more purely, discipline was delivered more effectively, and nobody had any allergies or ever got hurt.

Whatever the reality, for kids, one thing was indisputably better a generation ago – Valentine’s Day. It has always sucked for men and single people, but it used to be cool if you were a kid. It was like Halloween without the hassle of walking the whole neighborhood. Kids went to school, exchanged valentines with everyone in class, then came home with a bag full of inscripted candy hearts that they would use to interpret their future relationship status with the giver of each valentine.

“Ooh, this one says ‘U R Cute.’ And it’s from a girl! Maybe one day we’ll be married!”

Now the candy heart industry is quickly becoming the next iteration of Blockbuster Video – a once thriving, multi-million dollar venture that five years from now will cease to exist.

Why? Because today kids go to school on Valentine’s Day and bring home bags full of unsharpened pencils. Pencils! Just what every child loves. School-aged kids spend their days surrounded by pencils. Do you think doctors ever ask for rubber gloves for their birthday?

And what the fuck are kids supposed to do with unsharpened pencils, of all things? Take them home where the walls of their bedroom are lined with one pencil sharpener after another? My kids look more forward to Groundhog’s Day.

On top of that, pencils aren’t valued anywhere outside of elementary school. They can’t use them for any kind of currency or bargaining. They can’t hold onto them in the hope that they’ll be worth something someday. No one else uses pencils. Hell, we rarely use pens anymore. Even after getting forest-fulls of pencils on this once-great holiday, the kids go right back to working on their school-issued iPads. So they’re not even valued inside elementary schools!

But that’s the reality. Bringing candy to school is out. It’s just not allowed anymore. Too bad, too. For all the things kids enjoy (not getting chicken pox, for instance) that we didn’t get to, they definitely get the short end of the stick on Valentine’s Day. The short end of a lead-filled, eraser-capped stick.