Keri Athanas’ most memorable Valentine called for a restraining order.
“My first year of college this guy started stalking me and always telling me how in love with me he was,” she wrote. “On Valentine’s Day that year, he got really drunk and wrote me a card with crayons and inside (still in crayon), was the worst poem I’ve ever read. It said things like ‘My love for you burns like a candle, to the point at which I cannot handle.’ … As if that wasn’t bad enough, the day I moved out of my dorm for the summer, he walked up to me when I was with my parents packing the car and gave me a dozen roses, started crying and telling me how much he would miss me.”
The sophomore biology major transferred from Salisbury University last semester, but was nagged till she left, she said.
“I thought about getting a restraining order but he didn’t try to hurt me, so I thought that was a little extreme,” she said. “I think he was a hopeless romantic.”
Athanas’ entry in the Anti-Valentine’s Day contest at the Stamp Student Union’s Coffee Bar garnered applause and guffaws from a dozen cynical coffee drinkers assembled last night to hear the tales of thwarted passion.
Kate Linde, coordinator for Dining Services and Coffee Bar manager, designed the event as part of a series of open mic nights to draw students to the bistro.
“I think everyone’s doing the positive things [about the holiday],” she said. “There’s a lot of bitter people and I thought they’d want to share their experiences.”
Linde displayed a notebook in the Coffee Bar last week for students to record their worst Valentine’s Day memories. Wil Greene, a former student and Sketchup comedy troupe alumnus, narrated the 13 entries and chose a winner based on audience applause. The best tale won the writer dinner for two at Adele’s.
The winning entry was short and bleak: “All my life I’ve never had a Valentine. It sucks. Please feed me.”
The winner, a junior international business major who asked not to be named, signed her entry with the pseudonym “Julian.”
“I’ve always been single over Valentine’s Day,” she said. “I’ll probably take one of my best friends [to dinner]. My entry was pretty pathetic. I didn’t think I’d win.”
Meghan Markey’s story was also an audience favorite. Her senior year of high school was her first Valentine’s Day as half of a couple. She arrived to the date to find her boyfriend “completely wasted and dressed like a hobo.”
“I sat there in my new outfit while he proceeded to read me, while slurring his words, the worst and in some cases horribly depressing poetry I’ve ever heard,” she wrote.
The sophomore archeology major’s only gifts were a “drunken sloppy kiss” and a grounding for missing her curfew.
“We ended up dating for a month after that and then we broke up,” she said. “It kind of dissipated. He wasn’t the romantic type — obviously.”
