TODAY'S VIEWPOINT
Valentines should be held, not deleted
RHETA GRIMSLEY JOHNSON

Now some of my favorite people in the world have resorted to those clever, high-tech computer cards, and I never fail to look at and consider the message. Some are beautiful. Some are funny. Most are flashing and dashing with their cleverness across the screen. All are fleeting.

This year was a banner one for valentines, and eventually I filled an old cracked, yard-sale bowl with a pink rose in its bottom with all my cards. Sigh. You like me; you really, really like me.

I was Charlie Brown checking his mailbox. Each day for a week I moseyed down my long driveway to the regulation mailbox perched on its nonregulation cedar post and looked for Hallmark hearts or cartoon cupids.

I never made it back to the house before tearing into the greetings, relishing the funny or sweet thoughts from Martha, or Anne, or Patsy. Note to young females: After you reach adulthood, women send one another valentines. You won't get them from males, except for the de rigueur doggerel you might or might not get from the official Man in Your Life. Trust me, it's a girl thing.

(There are notable exceptions. I knew a Georgia man, a real romantic, who each year wrote his bride a valentine poem. She had held onto him for decades. Wouldn't you?)

Two cards that arrived this year were handmade, my favorite kind. There was one from my nephews with a packet of seeds in a pot and a message that said, "We're impatiens to see you again!"

All of these sweet cards will linger on my dining tabletop for a few more days, or weeks, depending on my mood. Then they will be carefully stored in a box tied with ribbon -- probably pink -- to look at again, or use, next year. I cannot bear to throw them away.

Compare that shelf life -- the one of the real, touchable, savable, kissable valentine -- with the e-card, those wishes that arrive with retrieval directions on your computer screen.

Now some of my favorite people in the world have resorted to those clever, high-tech computer cards, and I never fail to look at and consider the message. Some are beautiful. Some are funny. Most are flashing and dashing with their cleverness across the screen. All are fleeting.

They leave me cold. I can't save them. I can't savor them. I can't put them in a special place to look at next year in anticipation of the season. When I'm dead and gone, nobody will ever find them in a box in the back of my closet and wonder about the significance of the sender to my life.

Computer Christmas cards are one thing. But valentines? Messages of love and affection? The e-valentine should be illegal.

I'm willing to meet this high-tech world halfway. I did, in fact, buy one of the "singing" valentines for my husband this year. You open it just a smidge and Johnny Cash begins belting out "Ring of Fire." Eerie, but nice.

That campy card he can save, however. He probably won't, but he could if he wanted to, which is the point.

I realize in a world besieged by poverty, hunger, terrorists and taxes, this is not an issue most people would worry about. Get a life, some would say.

And yet, the methods in which we express ourselves to those we love should be considered, perhaps debated and refined. And the old-style love letter simply is hard to beat.

I know what you're thinking. I've been dragged kicking and screaming into the world of e-mail exchanges and Internet intersecting. I consolidate my fogy status every time I open my mouth to protest the greased slide into untested technology.

This time I know I'm right, on the side of the angels. A valentine should be

held in the hand and the heart for a long while, not deleted from a screen after a few seconds. Paper is not permanent,

and ink fades. But, so far, it is love's best bet.

(c) 2008 Rheta Grimsley Johnson Distributed by King Features Syndicate