Bill's Bulletin Board
By Bill Rea

Valentine's Day has come and gone, with the usual wide range of insincerely affectionate thoughts, often expressed in a form of shopping panic attacks, not quite as intense as what one sees at Christmas time.

Cynical, aren't I?

But I think there's a bit of truth in what I just wrote, at least for many people.

I, fortunately, am not part of that group. My wife regularly reads these columns of mine, so if I had been referring to myself, I certainly would have thought of something else to write about this week.

Traditions are something I can understand, and I am enough of a romantic to understand the need some people might feel to show some extra affection one day out of the year. But I believe it's even more true that people who really feel affection for each other usually show it just about every day, with maybe a little something extra this one day. Who needs to get too extravagant?

At the risk of turning stomachs out there, I can say that is the case with my wife and myself.

We try not to wave our mutual affection in everyone's face when we're together. Beth often accompanies me on assignments, and she's with me just about the whole day every Saturday. But we avoid the blatant stuff in public. Perhaps we could do a better job than we already do, at least in the eyes of some people.

My brother has been heard to mutter on occasion, "do they always have to act so (blankety-blank) married?"

So we try and behave in public, and we have had people notice and comment on how good we look together. It is true we've had more people approach Beth and offer condolences for the man she's stuck with, but I'm getting used to that.

When it comes to affection, I find it a lot more satisfying just knowing in my guts it's there. External signs, like a Valentine card, are nice, but they aren't needed.

I received a reminder of that last Wednesday, the day before Valentine's Day. I found myself with a bit of down time between evening assignments. I also realized, with a bit of a start, what auspicious day was approaching. Now Beth never forgets to at least get me a card on Valentine's Day, and since I've been a married man, I have done a good job of remembering too, usually getting something to boot, along the lines of flowers, or candy, or sometimes both, or sometimes something else.

As soon as I realized that I had better get something for my beloved, an idea started forming in my head of what would be appropriate, and I knew there was store nearby that could accommodate me. I won't say anything more along those lines. Like I said, Beth reads these columns, and keeping her guessing a bit is part of the charm; at least I think it is.

At any rate, I was able to obtain what I was looking for, and next had to come up with a way of getting it into the house without Beth knowing what I was up to (of course I wanted to surprise her).

As I walked in the house, I was sort of planning to slip quickly out to my car after she had gone to bed, and set everything up on the kitchen counter, where she would find it when she came downstairs Thursday morning. That plan quickly changed when I walked in. I heard the unmistakable sound of water filling the bathtub upstairs, and I realized Beth would be thusly occupied for the better part of half an hour. I can be an opportunist when I need to be, so I dashed back out to the car, retrieved the stuff and snuck back into the house. I hid the crucial package in a cupboard under the counter, astutely reasoning Beth would not likely check under there.

That whole operation was accomplished before she even knew I was home.

A while later, as Beth was retiring for the night, she came up to me and told me she understood how busy I have been the last couple of weeks (editing two community newspapers takes a lot out of a fellow, you know).

"I don't want you getting me anything for Valentine's Day," she said, in her best wifely tone. "You have too much to do as it is."

My first thought was she had gone into the kitchen cupboard and found what she wasn't supposed to find. But I quickly realized that would have been unlikely. That's just not Beth's way of doing things. Had she found the gift, she would not have let on. That way, she'd try to let me think she was surprised.

So after she went to bed, I did a bit of puttering about downstairs, and took a couple of minutes to arrange everything for the surprise that I was assuming was still alive.

It was, at least I think it was, from the reaction I received first thing Thursday morning.

It hasn't always been that way with me. In fact, there was a time when I considered Valentine's day to be something of a chore.

My mother always left little cards for us that morning, and when I started high school, my father angrily dressed me down one year for not getting her a card.

There were also the card exchanges in class Valentine' afternoon in the elementary grades, and us boys in the '60s didn't mind swapping such cards back and forth. It was a lot more fun than reading, writing and number-crunching.

As I got older, and came to realize that girls were not as yucky as I had once believed, I seldom got the urge to be overly romantic, largely because there wasn't anyone who sparked the REALLY necessary urges.

In fact, Beth was the first girl I ever bought flowers for on Valentine's Day. this was in the days when she was just my girlfriend, before she became my wife and girlfriend. I think she was more surprised when I handed them to her than I was that I had actually done something like this.

In some ways, maybe a day like this is a way to mark progression through life.