Valentine's Day at Martins

I had the luck to be in Martin's on the evening of Valentine's Day and I noticed two interesting patterns. The first was the demeanor of the men buying flowers at 7:00 PM on Valentine's eve. The mix was great to see from middle-aged men in suits (on a Saturday) to ND athletes in letter jackets. Most of them carried the flower bouquets by the base facing downwards at their hips seemingly trying to obscure the fact that they were purchasing them. In front of me in the checkout line, one ND athlete was buying a single red rose and looked sort of sheepishly at the two of us behind him before quickly looking away. He appeared to be in a rush to leave the store with that flower. I wondered if the feelings these men were having were akin to just being embarassed to be succumbing to the pressures of the day or if they were experiencing the anxiety we discussed in class worrying about how the recipient of the flowers would feel or interpret the gift.

The second thing I noticed as I walked through the other sections of the grocery store were a few couples shopping together. Their carts weren't full of the ingredients for a romantic dinner but rather the normal grocery store items: milk, etc. The two couples I most closely observed were a retirement-aged couple and an MBA student and his wife out shopping together. I found this to be an interesting thing that couple were doing their grocery shopping together and that it was not necessarily a generational thing. I wonder if this is becoming more common or was just a fluke from that night in the store or a function of the holidy. I also wondered if this is the recession Valentine's Day where it is just time spent together doing the normal things.