Warning: the following story might gross out a family member or two since it references kissing.

The very first Valentine's Day I shared with my beautiful then-future-husband was very sweet, but it also left me very confused. He asked me to come over to his house so he could cook me some pork chops. Nothing says lovin' like pork chops, by the way. At that point in our relationship, we were just really good friends--no kissing or anything like that. I sensed we both wanted something more, so I decided to put myself "out there" that day. I contemplated buying him a Valentine's gift. A week before the big day, I began polling many of my law school classmates to come up with something perfect. I wanted it to say "I like you," but not "I'm a scary single girl trying to trap myself a man." One classmate suggested refrigerator poetry magnets. I thought that was a good idea, so I went to a nearby store on my lunch break and bought them. In addition to the gift, I decided that was the night I was going to try and kiss him for the first time.

One week later, the big day came. I don't think I had any classes that day, so I put off studying to re-obsess about my gift choice. I decided refrigerator poetry magnets were a bad idea. To me, the gift gave a signal that I was looking for something long-term, since a person might keep them around for a very long time. I worried that being a part of his refrigerator might be too serious and domestic. I went to the grocery store and bought flowers instead. It was a mix of many types of flowers; the bouquet might have had a rose or two in it, but it mostly comprised daisies and carnations.

That evening, I met my then-future-husband at his house and gave him the flowers. It was the perfect gift! No one had ever given him flowers before, and if you know my husband, he loves flowers--alive, dead, or planted in the ground.

After dinner, we met up with a married-couple-friend of ours for dessert. I drove us there, and throughout the whole evening, I was becoming more and more anxious and excited about our upcoming first kiss. When we were leaving the dessert place, my future husband asked the couple to give him a ride home since they lived on the same side of town. I told him it was no problem for me to drive him, but he insisted. He seemed kind of wierd about it, so I said goodbye and went home feeling sad we didn't have our first kiss. I was so disturbed from the whole evening I decided to wait until finals were over before trying the kissing thing again. After all, I didn't want to get my head all messed up about a silly boy before exams.

Flash-foward two months, which was two weeks before final exams, the guy finally planted one on me. I was relieved I didn't have to worry about it any more, and it definitely DID mess up my head for finals.

After we had been married for some time, we reminisced about that evening. My husband told me the reason he asked for the ride home was because he thought I was acting wierd all night. He thought that I did not like him, and he felt he was wasting his time with me. We both laughed at how we completely misread each other that night and marveled that we were able to ever end up together!

Happy Valentine's Day!