
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 7, 1994                   TAG: 9402080008
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NO HEART FOR THAT DAY AFTER ALL|

I decided this year that I was going to like Valentine`s Day - but it didn't work out.

I have had slight regard for this phony holiday since this golden-tressed charmer in the third grade gave me one of those gag valentines.

Just take a good look at Valentine's Day. People run around buying candy in heart-shaped boxes. They buy flowers, and cards that say some really junky things.

The rest of the year, these people have the manners and compassion of your average timber wolf.

Husbands take their wives out to dinner even if Valentine's Day comes on a Monday, for Pete's sake.

Or give them jewelry. Or a Volvo station wagon. Or underwear with hearts on it.

It's dreadfully commercial. You won't see old yours truly here skulking around the mall, buying heart-shaped boxes of candy and searching for the RIGHT card.

If I were going to get the greatest station wagon driver of them all anything special for Valentine's Day, I'd go looking for a heart-shaped footbath we both could use.

Or maybe some dainty knee braces - red, maybe, with white hearts on them.

Actually, I`d have more use for knee braces than the driver would. She has attained the age necessary for Medicare participation, but she is often mistaken for my daughter. That's why I don't go to the mall with her very much.

Incidentally, if if any of you people feel you just have to get me something for Valentine's Day, a new knee brace would be nice.

Just make sure it doesn't have any little hearts on it. OK?

But don't expect me to get soft on Valentine's Day. If it were up to me, every person who went about with the words ``be my valentine'' on their lips would be whipped severely about their head and shoulders with a heart-shaped box of candy.

Any persons who bought his or her helpmate certain intimate items of underclothing would be paraded before their peers as undesirable, unwholesome and kinky people. The PTA would blackball them.

I have intended for years to form an organization that would oppose Valentine's Day as a drain on the morality and personal finances of this country.

It's too late this year, but let me have any of your thoughts for next year.

I'd rather not hear from those of you who got underthings with little red hearts on them.

by CNB