The Best Time I Got Dumped on Valentine’s Day

by Mary Miller

Sophomore year of college Valentine’s, I was “dating” a cute, blonde, and not-so-into-me punk rock boy. He had called to say that he wanted to come over to my apartment and see me that V-Day night, and I was sure it was so he could proclaim his love and probably surprise me with a romantic gift, even though we’d spent the previous weekend in his hometown together and it was iffy at best. Beginning weeks before, I had set about painstakingly making him a hand-painted wooden box as a Valentine’s Day gift — the top of which was a mosaic of tiny multicolored pieces cut from magazine pages that I applied one by one with a toothpick and glue to form a night sky. Inside the lid, I had intended to put a quote that was, and I can’t type it all here for reasons of space and my pride, Shakespeare’s “Take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that BLAHHHHHHHHH UGH UGH UGH.”

I must have had the feeling after our not-so-great weekend away that the quote might be overkill, so I left it off the box at the last minute (BECAUSE THE BOX ALONE WAS IN NO WAY OVERKILL, RIGHT?).

I set the box somewhere in my bedroom to grab and present to him at just the right moment.

When he arrived, he sat on the edge of my bed.

“I’m sorry, I can’t…I just can’t do this anymore.”

“You’re dumping me? On Valentine’s Day?”

“Well I can’t help what day it is, Mary. I mean, there’s never really a good time for this kind of thing, right?”

“Fair enough!” … is how I like to remember I reacted, though I’m pretty sure it was far less dignified. I do recall crying for the next 24 hours, then accepting an invitation to a friend’s kegger and kissing someone else. In retrospect, a great way to get over being dumped on Valentine’s Day. I still have the box!

Mary Miller lives and writes (and makes charts) in Portland, Oregon, where she has also spent many Valetine’s Days not getting dumped.