Valentine’s Day is considered a special day for people around the world. Love is in the air with so many memories to reminisce on. But the strongest memory of Valentine’s Day I have is saddening. The memory has defined me as the person I am today. It is my turn to reminisce on the day of love.
My dad’s a pilot so I moved around a lot as a child. I’m a pretty outgoing person, however these drastic moves caused me to shy away from other kids. I didn’t want to burst in on friendships that were already created, so I normally stuck to myself. In 4th grade, I finally was able to start fresh entering into a new class along with other students. I made a friend, who eventually became my best friend over the year. Let’s call her S.
S and I got along so well and we always had fun together at recess. But apparently, my friendship wasn’t enough for her. So what does this have to do with Valentine’s Day? Well during the school Valentine’s Day party for our class, our teacher decided to set the desks in a wide “U” shape. She wanted to make class interesting and fun. So she chose one student to sit in the first seat. They were in turn allowed to choose the next person they wanted to sit next to them. Eventually someone chose S. I watched as that kid whispered in my friends ear and suddenly my heart sank as she did not choose my name. She didn’t want to sit next to me. But why? What did I ever do to her? We were the best of friends and suddenly I was a confused and hurt 9 year old.
I stood helplessly waiting for someone to call my name. As I was the last one called, I sat down embarrassed that I was everyone’s last choice. Especially my best friend’s.
The end, right? Sadly, no. How could a 9 year old’s Valentine’s Day get even worse?
It was time for recess and S came up to me with her new found friends. They seemed excited and asked me to play with them. I was ecstatic and immediately forgot what happened earlier that morning. They all wanted to play hide and seek. I knew I could be super sneaky so I hid behind the big tree near the playground! I waited and waited and waited. I couldn’t be that sneaky? So, I decided to peek around the tree and there was S and her new friends playing on the playground as they were glancing towards the tree. They were all smiling and laughing. No one was looking for me. They left me there on purpose. I plummeted to the ground and began to cry behind the tree for the remainder of recess.
I was hurt, shocked, embarrassed, angry. So many emotions were flooding my body, I didn’t even know how to control them. The teacher blew the whistle to come back inside. I attempted to comfort and gather myself into sanity before I walked back towards the classroom.
It was finally time to open our decorated Valentine’s shoe boxes. Remember how the bigger cards were always meant for your friends or teacher? Yeah, I immediately wished I could take that back. I had given S a big Monsters Inc Valentine’s card. I sat alone sifting through all my cards and looked for the candies. All of a sudden S showed up with my card in her hand. She said she loved it and apologized. I told her that I had chosen that card just for her and she immediately said she got me a big card too! It was a Shrek card. I remember the day like it was yesterday.
We stayed friends but that day changed my life. You can always forgive, but you’ll never forget. Especially the day you were a neglected Valentine.
—A
aksaanwar.com 