Valentine's Day

Dove used to make a pink, plastic heart filled with heart-shaped chocolates. I believe they called it Dove Desires, or something similar to that. A few years ago, for two years straight, I received one of these Dove plastic hearts from an anonymous person on Valentine’s Day. No one, not my office-mate, not my other friends and coworkers, ever copped to being the person who left that gift for me.

What made it more interesting was that whoever left the gift had replaced every instance of the word ‘Desires’ on the card and label that came with the Dove treat with the word ‘Fantasies.’ As the card had a very steamy little description (I remember something along the lines of “Indulge your Desires”), replacing the key word with another had an interesting effect (now it reads “Indulge your Fantasies”).

To the best of my knowledge, no one else at the company received that particular gift under those particular circumstances. And it only happened those two years.

So, now, every Valentine’s Day I think of that gift and can’t help but wonder:

• Why replace the original name with the word Fantasy? Was I the fantasy, or did the person want to be my fantasy?
• Why didn’t the person ever fess up? I may have been interested. Even if I wound up not being interested, it would have been nice to know and share the memory with the person.
• Why did it stop? At that company we had high turnover; did the person leave because of the turnover? Was it voluntary? Did the person move on to someone else?

So, once again, it is Valentine’s Day and I am thinking of that gift and the person who left it. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I thank you. I have created so many myths and fantasies because of that gift you cannot imagine. I continue to look back with wonder. I guess partly because I'm such a blunt person, I wouldn't think to do something like that, it makes it that much more intriguing to me that someone would share that anonymous gift with me.

And, even though I dislike surprises, each year I secretly wonder if something similar will show up on my desk again.