A weirdly romantically unromantic Valentine's Day story

DH and I don't "celebrate" Valentine's Day.  We both think that if you can't show romance/love to your spouse during the rest of the year, then why bother?  And it is a media and overly commercialized circus that we prefer to ignore.

Many years ago, when I was in college, one of my friends and classmates was a very nice guy.  I'll call him "NiceGuy" to protect the guilty.  In my chosen major, there were about thirty of us and we typically spent the entire day together in our various classes.  We were a pretty close-knit group and everyone knew everything about everyone else; there were few secrets.

One fine day, NiceGuy woke up and decided to ruin a perfectly good friendship by deciding he wanted to date me.  *sigh*  We talked about it.  Repeatedly.  I told him I wanted to remain friends but did not want to date as I did not think of him as a boyfriend, only as a friend who happened to be male.  He thought that if he remained faithful, that I would change my mind.  Uh huh.

Of course, everyone in the class knew how he felt about me.  Everyone also knew that I did NOT feel the same way about him.  In fact, some of my other male friends in the class tried to talk some sense into NiceGuy.  He refused to face the facts.

So on Valentine's Day, I woke up as usual and went to class, not really registering that it was indeed Valentine's Day as I had no romantic interest at the time.  I got on the elevator to go up to my first class and one of my classmates said, "I'm sorry," and handed me a rose.  It was from NiceGuy (it had a sweet little note on it).  *sigh*

When I got to the classroom and sat down at my desk, another classmate walked up, told me she was sorry, and handed me a little box of chocolates.  It was from NiceGuy, and it, too, had a sweet little note on it.  *deep sigh*

This pretty much went on for the whole day.  A classmate would ambush me, tell me they were sorry, and hand me a little gift.  I was ambushed in the ladies bathroom, in the lunch line, in the supply closet - you name it.  I ended up with 10 little romantic presents, all with sweet notes and all things I liked (chocolate, a favorite pen, Dr. Pepper, etc.).

It turns out that NiceGuy had been pining away and one of the other guys in his dorm suite (all eight guys living in this suite were in our class) came up with the plan.  (I think the other guys were tired of listening to NiceGuy's constant declarations of undying love.)  He suggested to NiceGuy that he give it his best shot on Valentine's Day.  If that failed to move me, then NiceGuy should knock it off and go back to being just friends.  NiceGuy agreed and came up with his plan.  The people that ambushed me only agreed to do it if NiceGuy promised to keep his part of the bargain. 

It was the sweetest and most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.  Unfortunately, I was not interested.  At the end of the day, I sat down with NiceGuy and explained to him again that I was just not interested in him as a boyfriend.  I also told him that what he had done was the most romantic thing ever and that I truly did appreciate his effort.  The poor man finally got it.  And yes, we did remain friends after that.

I ran into him about 10 years later.  He was happily married to the woman of his dreams and they had two children.  At that time I was happily married to DH, the only man for me.  But I guess I'll always have a soft spot for NiceGuy and his weirdly romantically unromantic Valentine's Day caper.

LoneStar