Worst Valentine's Gifts of the Year

Valentine’s Day- time for another round of well intentioned, but romance starved, gifts. Take charge! Turn up the heart throbs by handing this essential guide to the clueless loved one in YOUR life.

Love Hurts-

Especially if You Give Her WD-40.

 

Avoid These

¤ Worst Valentine’s Gifts of the Year¤

 

 

To qualify as a Worst Gift, nominees must actually be sold as Valentine’s Day gifts to the indiscriminating consumer. (Caveat emptor, love machine, caveat emptor...) These are certified undesirables. Avoid them, add a good line, and you can try appliances, shoe polish, or dental floss repair kits, but whatever you do, don’t get:

¤ The Second Runner Up:

The Chocolate Rose.

This one almost took the competition because it LOOKS so believable, and thousands are going to fall for it. Women love the single rose thing, right? And we love chocolate. Here we get two birds in one nicely shrink-wrapped stone. What could possibly say "You’re the most precious part of my life" better than thirty cents of foil-wrapped chocolate perched atop a plastic stem?

Grow up, Gomer. Sure, the single rose thing can be romantic, if it is unexpected and you actually spend serious money occasionally. (Yes, dear. You take all your money seriously. Try to read between the lines here.) The unexpected single rose leads your love to the conclusion that you aren’t buying forgiveness or cheaping out, so you must be: Truly Romantic.

(That’s a good thing.) Under these conditions, add any remotely mushy statement and we’ll fall for it, hook, line and sinker. Valentine’s Day, however, is the expected and obvious occasion. Save the Classic Single Rose for later.

¤ The Year’s Worst Valentine’s Gift Bonus-

The Classic Line :

Looking for that perfect something to say? It’s not as difficult as you might think. Go for unique, or fall back on funny. Or, put them together by borrowing this one from Steve, Sultan of the Silver Tongue:

"La rue et petite."

(La Roo ay puh-TEEt) Say this with an impassioned look, and it works. What’s that? Well, yes, it does translate, "The street is small." But, if your beloved speaks French, she’ll assume you’re being witty and worldly wise. The biggest risk here is that you’ll seem smarter than you really are. Go practice.
Alright, what NOW?
It translates "The street AND small?" Who am I, your French teacher?
I think we can all safely blame Steve for this one. Now pay attention!

 

 

¤ First Runner Up:

One-Size-Fits-All-Hearts Gifts.

The single rose is also about as unique as the Basically Navy Father’s Day tie. Until you can select flowers with cartoon characters or chile peppers on them, a single rose can only say so much.

The Valentine’s equivalent is The Cutesy Bear. This is a bear, with or without candy, in a mug, a wine glass, a sack, a tin... It is holding a flower, balloon, or placard that expresses the depth of your time together and the passion she inspires with that only-for-you-angel sentiment, "I ¤ U"... You get the idea. Trust me, she does. The first bear, like the first Basically Navy Tie, isn’t so bad, but over time it loses that "thinking of you" quality, and becomes "thinking of anyone who might be collecting all the ties/bears known to mankind."

More importantly, generic gifts often have serious implications attached to them. Implications which may exceed your intentions. Take the case of a couple we’ll call Kara- umm, Karen and Kevin.

Kevin purchased his girlfriend a bear marketed by a card company that is more impressed by the trademark on the back of its card, than with the sentiment on the front. It was cute. It was cuddly. It came with chocolates. She liked it, and being the kind of guy that tries to Pay Attention to What She Likes, Kevin decided to repeat the procedure the next year. This would not have been so bad, but that year’s bear came holding an empty Valentine’s box in his paws and, Kevin didn’t see any significance to that.

He didn’t see the significance as she stifled a scream of delight and checked her manicure.

He didn’t see the significance when her eyes misted as she called him "Darling."

"Wow! What a GREAT BEAR!", Kevin thought.

He missed how her fingers trembled as she greedily clutched the bear in one hand and gingerly opened the tiny little lid...

Naturally, he also missed her stifling the urge to stuff the bear and its empty box down his throat. (Total Cluelessness has its advantages.)

You see now, that you are better off avoiding The Cutesy Bear. This is not easy, since it has gained shelf space in the Valentine’s marketplace. Somehow, it must be stopped before the quest to put the bear in more and more "unique" containers goes beyond the basics to the bizarre. The most convincing evidence of this is:

¤ The Winner:Worst Valentine’s Day Gift of the Year

Feeling smothered by your honey? Trapped and looking for an escape? Win points for "expressing yourself" as you let her down gently using symbolism. Present her with a plush, valentine teddy bear sitting amongst chocolate candy Kissesä while its fuzzy cherubic face presses anxiously up against the glass of a VACUUM SEALED CANNING JAR.

The perfect present when that lovin’ feelin’ has turned into that suffocatin’ one.

Picture little Winnie-the-Stew climbing in, eating the candy and getting so fat he couldn’t escape before some near-sighted granny canned him with her snap beans. It’s sure to send a message, with no need to worry about mixed signals. She’ll know the bloom has faded, when she opens the lid and hears that vacuum fresh shthup! sound.

StewBear should have gone for the chocolate rose...