Ugly Red

To be honest, I'm color blind.  The usual male red-green color blindness.  A sex linked characteristic is the term applied.  Not that it has anything to do with sex.

What it does have to do with is my disdain for the red roses that flood the world on Valentines day.  Between the color blindness and the complete disaster that I was overwhelmed with last year, February 14th really sucks.

It's doubly difficult when you're a florist and the most profitable day of the year is one that you want to forget.

How did I get myself into this ridiculous situation you ask?

It really hit the fan last February.

I could never relate to the passion that the red roses seemed to bring out in February.  They just kind of looked like a blah collection of petals to me.  Not that it changed how I stocked up and prepared for a major selling event.  I'd been in the business long enough to know that the majority of the poor saps that came into my shop would want the traditional stems.

The emotions behind their purchases were certainly understandable.  Julie had entered my life during the previous summer, and I've have bought a million roses if I thought that was what she wanted.

One of the things that drew me to her was that Julie wanted different things from most girls.  Julie would rather have a cookout on the beach at sunset then dinner in a fancy restaurant, she'd rather walk through piles of colorful leaves in the fall then spend time and money shopping, and would rather be out on the ski slopes then inside as a lodge bunny.

Wouldn't you expect her to love, say, a daisy.  That's what I thought anyway.

Wrong!

I'd actually set aside a whole bouquet of the yellow and white classics.  I closed down my shop at the end of the day, having sold out of the usual long stemmed red monsters, and headed to Julie's with my daisy surprise.

It was a surprise all right.  Turned out that the other girls in her office had gotten the red monsters.  Julie was a traditionalist in that one area.  I just wish I'd known.

It got worse!

Julie was allergic to something in the all American daisy.  Violently allergic.  Rush her to the emergency room allergic.  Just a great place to spend Valentine's evening.

Right about now you're saying to yourself, well, a sympathetic guy could have made up for the bouquet with a show of concern.  And I was well on my way to demonstrating my kind, gentle side, when a really bad coincidence happened.

"Bobby," the emergency room nurse screamed when she saw me.

Ignoring Julie, who obviously needed help, the nurse came up to me, threw her arms around me, and planted a big smacker on my wide open, surprised, mouth.

"I haven't seen you since last Valentine's day," the nurse continued, "when you brought me those spectacular roses."

Wonderful.  I couldn't even remember her name then, and still don't.

Julie recovered, but our relationship didn't.  Phone calls went unanswered.  Text message just disappeared into the ether.  And she was never home to me.

And the fact that the roses for the nurse were white didn't make any difference.