The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre

Tomorrow, of course, is Valentine’s Day, and I think I speak for everyone when I say: Yeah, so?

Even if I don’t speak for everyone, I’m speaking for me, and that’s all that really matters. Valentine’s Day represents love and all that stuff, and I simply haven’t had a lot of good experiences in that department. For example, in fifth grade, there was a girl named Garaghty in my class, and I was just madly in love with her. So I decided I should ask her to “go with me.” This is what all my friends were doing at the time, and while I wasn’t entirely certain what exactly it meant for someone to “go” with someone else, I was quite willing to find out.

So I sent my friend Brad over to Garaghty one day at recess in order to ask her if she would go with me. Note that I did not go ask her myself. To do this, I would have had to actually speak with her, something I had not done with much frequency prior to this point. In fact, I was pretty much going out on a limb that she would even remember who I was when Brad asked her.

Brad returned a few moments later with the report that, when he had asked her if she would go with me, she had replied: “Tell him to go find a stray dog.”

Being the stalwart soul that I was, I naturally responded to this minor setback by hiding in the bathroom for the remainder of the school year.

Aside from this, I see evidence all the time that love just isn’t everything it ought to be. Take, for instance, the Police Beat column in the BYU Daily Universe (motto: “Don’t Call Us Puppets of the Administration — We’re More Like Marionettes”). The column on January 29, written by Shannon Dorminey, brings us an interesting story. Actually, it brings us two interesting stories, but only one of them relates to the matters at hand. The other one is under the heading “Lewdness” and reads, “On Jan. 9, a student from Hinkley Hall was issued a $25 citation for mooning another individual,” which I guess could have something to do with love, but I’d rather not speculate how.

Anyway, the other interesting story is under the heading “Sex Offense” and goes like this: “…A female student accepted a ride home from The Palace with a male student. Instead of taking her home, the student took her to his apartment…and proceeded to make advances toward her. The victim was able to persuade the student to take her home.”

Ladies and gentlemen, the question I have is why is this under “Sex Offense”? There was apparently no sex involved, and it doesn’t sound like anything the guy did was terribly offensive, if the girl was able to convince him to take her home instead. I don’t wish to imply anything, but it seems to me that if it came down to it, this girl could probably have beaten the snot out of this guy anyway, had she been so required. This story should have gone under “Dorky Guys Who Think Kidnapping a Girl Will Make Her Like Him.”

But have a nice Valentine’s Day anyway, and Garaghty, if you’re reading this, I just want to let you know that I’m now a published columnist and you’re not, so nyah nyah nyah.

(Eric D. Snider is freshman at BYU from Lake Elsinore, California, and he would like to point out that Valentine’s Day is his mother’s birthday, so it has at least one redeeming quality.)