Valentines Day: Trick or Treat?

Valentines Day has been funny at the Dolly Mama household.

First, the good: 3 sweet emails from my hubby (who had to work a 24 hour shift today), plus a big bunch of beautiful roses delivered to me! Awwww!!!!!!!!!!

Second, the funny: When I saw my 12 year old son after school I noticed he was wearing this cross necklace thing that I had never seen before. "Where'd you get that?" "It's from Sheryl" he replied. "A Valentines Day gift."

Oh, yikes! Valentines Day! My poor kid! He hadn't actually realized that *today* was V Day. And here comes his little girlfriend with a gift for him, and he had...nothing!

Ooops!

I guess it would've been nice to do a little coaching, but, we didn't even think of it. Also, we had been trying to dissuade him from getting into the whole boyfriend/girlfriend scene, so I guess it would seem rather contradictory to then turn around and try to teach him how to be a good boyfriend.

Nevertheless, he has himself a girlfriend, and he had committed a major faux pas today, so I felt like I should help him out. First, we had to scrounge up a gift. I volunteered my box of chocolates that came with my roses, since I haven't been eating sugar for 6 weeks (and I lost at least 8 lbs. thanks to that!) . I also offered one of my roses, and got it all gussied up with a fern and baby's breath and some nice tissue paper and a bow (let's hear it for my wonderful new craft center that I organized a few weeks back!).

Next, he had to call her to try to weasel his way out of the fix he was in. I helped him craft his story, to save his butt, although we were careful to not lie. So, the recommended conversation went something like this:

"Hey Sheryl, it's Sullen. I bet you think I didn't get you anything for Valentines Day. Well, actually, I *do* have something for you. I don't think it would have done well on the bus and through the whole school day, so I wondered if I could bring it over to your house tonite."

Am I good, or what?!

So, she went for it, and we then had to head out to Sheryl's house. I had wanted to get the directions from the mother myself, but Sullen came up the stairs with a paper with what looked like directions on it and read them off to me, so I said fine and we got everybody ready and headed out.

So....first leg of the journey the directions are:

"Go down this road 12 miles til you see a bridge on the right. Turn RIGHT there."

So, no name of the road we are turning onto?

Nope. Just a bridge. I think it's something-something Road. We'll know it when we see it.

Oh. Ok.

So, we start driving down The Road. It's a pretty rural road to begin with, like for the first 4 miles, and after that it gets kind of...... Well, let's just say that after 4 miles my preschoolers were acting very scared and saying, "There's monsters here!"

Although I told them there were no monsters and that we were very, very safe, I thought it was MiTee Creepy out there in the sticks.....

So, at about 5.5 miles Sullen points to the LEFT and says "There's a bridge! Turn there!" and of course I flew right past it since it hadn't been anything close to 12 miles yet. But he tells me he's sure this is the way to go. So, I pull over (well, actually, by this point the road was mostly a one-lane affair, so there really wasn't anywhere to pull over to. I just stopped. Don't worry--there was absolutely no traffic whatsoever.) to consult the directions.

And what do I see?

Names of roads. Route numbers. And a squiggly line.

"So, these are the directions?!" I ask.

"Well, yeah. I just drew a map and remembered most of it in my head."

Oh GREAT! So, we see now from the squiggly line that we should actually turn left (which made sense to me in relation to where I thought she lived) but had no idea what other roads, house numbers, landmarks, etc. we were looking for. Goodie.

I know! We'll call them on the cell phone.

But I bet you know what comes next!

No reception for the cell phone out there in Monster Land!

Of course.

So, I decided to be adventurous, make a memory, and go back to turn on the road my son thought was the right one. (And I hoped to high heaven that we could find our way back home, too, because it was totally dark with no help in sight.) From there we made another turn, purely on instinct, and then got to the end of that road and it was one of the roads we were looking for! (none of the other roads had signs or markers of any type) So, which way do we turn? No telling.

Thankfully, at that point, the cell phone beeped at me, letting me know we were now in an area where I could make a call. So we sat there at the stop sign and called her.

I would like to make a small side note here, that I am very unsure what my son sees in this girl. She's pretty I guess, and she seems to be pretty down-to-earth, which I know is more his kind of thing. But, you know, these middle school love affairs don't even include the kids speaking to each other in person or sitting together or anything. He doesn't call her hardly at all, didn't get her anything for Christmas, and just generally doesn't seem very preoccupied with her. My theory is that with all the pressure around him to "have a girlfriend" he just got one so that he can say he has one, and everyone can leave him alone about it now. The pressure's off, I guess.

When it comes to this girl's personality, well, I just don't know. When I first met her at the middle school dance she barely spoke or looked at me or anything. (Maybe a 6+foot tall boyfriend's mom is just too darn scary??) But, heck! She didn't even speak to my son either! Tonite on the phone I noticed that the child can barely speak discipherable English. She didn't know if one should turn left or right to get to her house. She didn't know her own house number. She didn't know which side of the road her house was located on. And, sadly, it seems these questions were somewhat challenging for her mother as well.

So, um, we found their home, Sullen braved past their 3 barking and snarling dogs, and handed off the V Day loot to dear Sheryl. Their exchange was short, which I guess it had to be considering that Sheryl was trying to juggle flower, card, box of chocolates, and a dog wrapping it's chain around her ankles while barking and jumping. Sullen stood there with his hands in his hoodie, nodding while keeping a wary eye on the dogs (he's been bit/attacked by dogs twice in the past year, so he's kind of nervous around them now). It looked like they basically said something like,

Hi.
Hi.
Happy Valentines Day!
Thanks.
So how many dogs do you have?
16. If you look around at the neighborhood trailers, you can imagine why.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
Well, um....
Yeah, well, see you at school tomorrow.
OK, bye.
Bye.

Definitely a holiday for the books!!!