CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: VALENTINE'S DAY CONFUSION IS IN THE CARDS

I went shopping for valentines the other day.

I found almost everything I needed: A valentine for my father, for several friends and for two old boyfriends I'm still speaking (and sending cards) to.

I'm still searching for the perfect romantic but noncommittal valentine.

The kind that says: I'm really glad we met, I hope we keep meeting, and please don't think this indicates I'm looking for any kind of commitment for anything past dinner Saturday night, but if you think you'd like to, it would be nice.

Hallmark doesn't make that card. And if they do, it's still got hearts all over it.

They make cards for people who are getting divorced (consolations and congratulations), cards for people getting married, cards for people having babies, cards for people buying houses, sympathy cards, friendship cards, I'm sorry cards, I love you cards.

If they can make cards for people who are completing detox programs, why can't they make cards for people in the semi-early stages of what might become a relationship if nobody meets anybody else or picks their teeth in public or gets arrested?

Maybe I'm being too cautious here.

Aside from the part where you start screaming and throwing things at each other, the quasi-relationship stage is my least favorite part of getting past the second date. It's like feeling an itch and knowing that in about a week, it's either going to turn into full-blown poison oak or I'm going to shed my pudgy outer skin and (finally!) turn into Sharon Stone.

There was a time when people didn't buy greeting cards. They just told each other they felt or sent flowers corresponding to the international florists' code. Red roses for romantic love, pink for platonic love, orange for envy or hatred. Dandelions for don't ever call me again, you creep.

Then we realized that actually verbalizing emotions causes all kinds of problems, somebody invented Mother's Day, et voila! The greeting-card industry was born.

And they make movies, too. And 60-second commercials that reduce me to a blubbering mass of tears.

Obviously, it's an industry geared toward women, whether you're giving women a reason to spend their hard-earned cash or trying to find some way to placate the woman in your life.

A friend's trying to talk her husband into talking his buddy into buying his wife a valentine.

We're not quite sure how he can bring the subject up in a more subtle manner than just saying, "Hey, bud! Quit being such a jerk and spring for the $2 card!"

I have a feeling most guys don't call each other and say, "Let's go have a cappucino and see what's new at the greeting card store."

Maybe the power tools section at Sears, but they're not going anywhere near any store with a section called "Tender Reflections."

At least not together.

On some level, it's kind of refreshing that you can't reduce every nuance of life to a few lines of free verse on stock paper.

On another, at least at the moment, I'm somewhat annoyed by the whole thing.

They probably don't make a card for that either.

Peggy O'Farrell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.