You know them. You’ve seen them, talked to them, had the darkest corners of your lonely existence interrupted by the intrusive glare of their emanating love rays. You pass them in Ho Plaza, praying that their heavy-handed PDA is only the first staged scene of a sexual health demonstration. Their first language is couple talk, but they’re also fluent in condescension. They have little-to-no sarcasm perception, which turns out to be quite handy.

They are the human manifestation of Valentines Day, and you can’t help but hate them.

Like these couples that make you feel like you ate 70-too-many conversation hearts, Valentine’s Day means well. They intend to set the world aflame with the fluffy puppy-filled pudding of love, but really they just make you want to burn their house of Hallmark cards to the ground. And nothing placates you quite like dismissing the whole lot as “fake.”

As a side note, I’m often slow on my uptake. For example, for weeks after my parents’ wedding, I thought my stepfather was black. He’s Polish. So it may not excite your pacemakers to discover that I only recently heard the Hallmark-created-Valentines-Day-for-sales rumor. Having vested interest in the ready availability of free V-Day candy, I take offense to this attack on the meaning of February 14th. And, in perhaps my first ever serious endeavor in my two-plus years as a columnist, I aim to defend the validity of this day of days by offering the fact-checked history of the Day of Valentine.

The origin of Valentine’s Day dates back to first grade, when, traditionally, children would spend weeks trying to convince their mothers to save money on valentines by using those on the back of Little Debbie snacks; of course, they would need roughly 10-15 boxes to accommodate all the children in their class. The days leading up to Valentine’s were when children traditionally had their first lesson in passive aggressiveness, as they allocated their good cupid-shaped glitter card for use on the class-hottie Kevin, and their nonsensical “I Heart Sheep” card to Kelly, the alleged colored pencil thief.

Finally, when the sun rose on that fateful day, they would hurry down to the kitchen table to find their oatmeal died pink, and a red Hallmark card resting on the Christmas Table Elf that creepily floated around well past its holiday’s allotted calendar slot. In school, Valentine’s Day became a sort of second Halloween, as teachers threw enough chocolate in their direction to effect week-long constipation. Children would learn to count, color between the lines, and manage their first friendship-with-benefits with their sworn-enemy behind the communal swing set. Later, they’d learn of the inevitable outcome of all friendships-with-benefits, as she’d attempt to choke him with mud for giving his cupid valentine to Tess.

Around 7th grade, the meaning of Valentines Day changed, as boys didn’t drool quite as much as I did over their gelled spikes, mushroom cuts and their sparkling metallic smiles. However, five authentic, autonomous girls from England had stirred the beginnings of a gender war with their sermons on Girl Power, and raging hormones combined with high kicks and peace signs to create the most sexually confusing event since Ziggy Stardust. The front end of the day was spent in a Fiddler-on-the-Roof style dance of gender-segregation, until Kevin, the sassy heartthrob who’d developed a knack for nonconformity, told the redhead twice his size that she was, in fact, his valentine — to which she delicately replied what would become her signature dating maneuver well into her 20s: “FINE I’LL MAKE OUT WITH YOU! GIRL POWER!” He spent the rest of the day in the men’s room. Traditionally.

In the year of High School A.D., one’s V-Day activities had the socially defining power of a sorority tote bag. As pretty Molly Ringwalds were audibly shocked at discovering their locker lined with roses, the keg-tapping boys high-fived over who was going to tap whose keg that night. As the band kids and drama junkies took a moment to read excerpts from Romeo and Juliet before their usual Monday-morning orgy, the jock girls took what they wanted from prepubescent stragglers that promised to put up the least resistance. Our ancestors, the A.P. students who called the entirety of the English department by their first names, spent the morning desperately clinging to the dismissive property of the term “consumer culture,” and the evening desperately clinging to the arms of their boyfriend pillows, listening to Something Corporate as they wrote angst-ridden poetry asking themselves why Kevin likes boys now.

Freshman year, the meaning of Valentine’s Day again became blurred with that of Halloween, as the young adults would stuff themselves with Bear Nasties Lindt Truffles and grab a bow and arrow to update their “Slutty Halloween Angel” costume to a more topical “Slutty Cupid” costume. Valentines themselves took on the anonymity of Secret Admirers in the dark lights of the themed frat party, as only hours of Facebook searching could later reveal his true identity as an eerie law school student sharking around the frats for fresh meat. No wonder he kept asking her age.

Nowadays, good old V-Day has different meanings for different people. For bang-a-buddies, you’ve probably already begun the process of forcing emotional intimacy into a happily physical relationship to insure a potentially painful, but deliciously free V-Day dinner. For singles, this is a great time to reassert your Girl Power by binging on Purity with friends until you’re so hopped up on sugar, the nutritional contents become hilarious. For new relationships, this is a perfect opportunity to avoid overstepping relationship boundaries by picking out all the conversation hearts containing “love.” And for those too scared to make a move, this is your day to pray she wears something even more translucent than spandex.

It’s true; Hallmark, Kay’s and Russell Stover make Valentine’s Day way too complicated. But it doesn’t have to be. Whether you’re single, horrifyingly single, in a relationship, or just horny, everybody pretty much wants the same thing they wanted when they were six: 15 boxes of Zebra Cakes and someone to grope behind the swing set.