I have blogged about Valentine's Day a few times over the years, and I am starting to run out of things to say. Shocking, I know. But how many times can one write about a commercialized holiday perpetuated by the chocolate and floral industry?
I thought this Valentine's Day I would share an anecdote about how I chose my significant other. And I guess I chose wisely, so far, because Dan and I have been married for twelve years.
I grew up in a baseball family, following my brother's All-Star and American Legion teams around during the summers. All of the other baseball family members knew me, were quite interested in my love life for some reason, and had all sorts of relationship advice.
But the exchange I best remember happened around the time I met Dan. My brother's baseball team was playing in the city where I lived, at one of the local high schools, so I went to watch my brother play.
“Is he kind to animals?” one of the fathers who was sitting in the stands asked me.
"What?" I said.
"This guy you're dating, is he kind to animals?" he repeated. "You can tell a lot about how a man will treat his partner by the way he treats animals."
"I thought you could tell by the way he treats his mother," I said.
"No, the way a guys treats animals is a better indicator."
"I haven't seen him around any animals yet," I said.
But as I sat there, I recalled another guy I had dated briefly back in college. He had kicked a dog once in front of a couple of our friends and me. We were horrified, and I did, in fact, find out that he was not respectful to humans either. Maybe there was something to this theory.
This baseball father's litmus test popped into my mind a few months later when Dan was telling me about "Charlie," his chocolate lab who was getting older and probably would not make it much longer.
"She's such a good dog and doesn't get all the attention anymore because the other dogs in the house are younger and more energetic than she is, and I think she's kind of sad . . ."
At this point in our relationship, I had never heard Dan string together so many words together about anything, and I remember his eyes taking on this sincere, concerned quality while he talked about Charlie.
"That's it," I told my mother over the phone a few days later. "I think I might marry him. He loves his dog."
It turned out Dan is nice to animals, nice to humans, and mostly nice to me.
Yesterday, however, I was hesitant to ski one of the hillier trails at Ponderosa State Park because of the icier-than-usual snow conditions, and Dan said, "Come on. I've decided we're going to ski it."
"That's not nice to make me ski a scary trail."
"It's not Valentine's Day yet," he said.
But he is still kind to animals.
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| Yes, Dan and I still support the chocolate and floral industry on Valentine's Day |
Other awesome posts about Valentine's Day from In Jill's Words:
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