it's valentine's day... go ahead, get yourself a honey.

worked a marathon shift today at s-town which, surprisingly, was not bad at all. best moment of the day occurred when the 40-something chinese man (his ethnicity only being relevant because he speaks virtually no english) came in and ordered his usual grande coffee. as i was handing him his coffee, i wished him a happy valentine's day, realizing at once that the greeting was futile, because he understands so little english, and probably was unfamiliar with the holiday anyway. he looked puzzled, as did i, i'm sure, because i wasn't really sure how to explain v-day with hand gestures.

but starbucks came to my rescue. apparently the company made these itty bitty v-day cards to hand out to special customers or with our promotional cupcakes or something... i'm not really sure what... but i handed one to him, hoping it would spark some sort of memory or understanding.

he looked at the card for a moment, and then his face lit up.

"VALENTINE'S DAY!" he said.

i smiled and was excited that he knew what it was.

"you are giving this to ME?" he said, pointing to the card.

"you know it," i said, smiling.

he got really excited. it was one of the cutest things i've ever seen. he was trying, bless his heart, to tell us something about how his mom had taught him about valentine's day, but i really couldn't understand a word.

then he reached in his pocket and handed me $5.

huh?

i thanked him, and motioned to him that i was putting it in the tip jar. he shook his head. he wanted me to have it. and then, to make things less weird, he handed a few dollars to my male co-worker, michael. he was so excited.

so, before he left the store, i gave him some gourmet cupcakes. which made him even happier. apparently we made his day. which was really cute.

on a slightly unrelated note, i read in the Red Eye today that, according to a recent study, the average woman kisses 79 men before she gets married. supposedly this is the average. which means that, unless this study was conducted on one woman (which i think is entirely possible), there are a fair amount of study participants whose tally is signifcantly higher than 79. is this really what the world is like outside of my little world? say it isn't so!