MARK MY WORD: VALENTINE'S DAY IS MORE THAN HEARTS AND CANDY

Valentine's Day is more than hearts and candy. Joni and I were married on Valentine's Day 16 years ago.

The advantage of being married on Cupid's holiday is that you shouldn't forget your anniversary. If you do, forget the flowers. They won't help.

We've never been good at giving traditional anniversary gifts, although I think we did well the first year.

The traditional first anniversary gifts include plastics and furniture. We had plenty of plastic in the form of credit cards, which came in handy when we bought a house full of furniture.

But most men can't get away with giving their wives some of those other traditional anniversary gifts. Take the sixth anniversary, for example.

You're supposed to give her iron. Will a steam iron do? Or how about an iron skillet? Both of those items are certain to generate plenty of hostility.

Or how about steel? That's the traditional gift for couples on their 11th anniversary. Personally, I just can't imagine giving Joni a steel I-beam or even stainless steel silverware.

Joni says I should have given her a cruise. Cruise ships are made of steel, she says.

As for the 16th anniversary, I haven't a clue what the traditional gift is. It's probably something like cellophane.

When you're the parents of young children like we are, the best gift is having an available babysitter so you can go out to dinner and eat your food without a burping baby on your shoulder or a 4-year-old doing aerobics in her chair.

Traditional anniversary gifts get more expensive the longer you have been married. It's all silver, gold and jewels from the 25th anniversary on. A nice bouquet and a card might have worked in those early years, but not after decades of marriage.

Men have to do more than take out the trash or do a couple of loads of laundry during a full moon. It's either that or buy them more expensive presents to make up for all those irritating things we do.

Of course, you don't have to get hitched on Feb. 14 to enjoy Valentine's Day. But it is cheaper. When you get married on Valentine's Day, your wife will expect both a Valentine's present and an anniversary present from then on.

Valentine's Day has a rich history, and I'm not talking just about chocolates.

Some trace the holiday back to Roman times: The Romans held a festival on Feb. 15 to protect themselves from wolves.

During the celebration, young men struck women with strips of animal hide. Women thought such whippings made them more fertile.

Wolves, of course, knew better.

Eventually, the Roman men ran out of animal hides and started sending flowers instead. They discovered this was a much better way to keep their wives and girlfriends happy.

Many Valentine's Day customs involved ways that single women could learn who their future husbands would be.

English women of the 1700s wrote men's names on scraps of paper, rolled each in a little piece of clay and dropped them into the water. The first paper to rise to the surface showed who was the lady's true lover.

If the charm worked, they saw their future husbands in their dreams.

In later times, they just called the Psychic Hotline.

As far as I know, my name never surfaced in somebody's wet clay. But I'm happy just the same.

Happy Anniversary, Joni.

Mark Bliss is a member of the Southeast Missourian news staff.