There were a score of broken teenage hearts in Taneytown on Friday night, their remains in tatters around their owners' feet, but not just because it was Friday the 13th. In fact, these teenagers had tied their hearts around their legs and done their best to burst each other's bubbles, or in this case, balloons.
"There's an icebreaker activity where you tie balloons around each others ankles and try to pop them. So I tied heart-shaped balloons around their legs so they were breaking hearts," said Dolores Schuiler, volunteer coordinator with the Taneytown Branch of the Carroll County Public Library. It was the eve of Valentine's Day, and with the help of an advisory board of local teens, the library had come up with an Anti-Valentine's Day After Hours Party.
Hearts and ice broken, library staff and teens took to an activity room set up with an assortment of Valentine's Day-themed crafts and activities, albeit with a twist: heart candies with blank faces, on which participants could write unromantic messages; felt "grumpy cats" to sew; and "misfortune cookies" with dismal predictions such as, "You will be forever alone."
And where Cupid is renowned for taking aim at the young with love's bow and arrow, the young at this party turned the table and took aim at Cupid — literally. Setting a Cupid-shaped target on the wall, a group of teens with Nerf guns gave him a taste of his own medicine with a near-constant rain of foam, suction-cup-tipped darts.
"It's just a way for teens that might not have a boyfriend or girlfriend to get together and have some fun activities," said Lori Holechek, children's librarian. "We have a teen advisory board, and they came up with the idea. They just wanted a fun way to celebrate Valentine's Day without it being about hearts and roses."
No roses, unless of course it's the black duct tape roses that could be made at one of the craft stations. There were marshmallows and familiar baked goods too, although with more macabre themes than a standard Valentine's Day treat.
"I was murdering a gingerbread man," said 12-year-old Jordan Eaves, a gingerbread cookie on the table before her with three small plastic swords protruding from his icing skin. She said she is not a fan of the traditional Valentine's Day sentiments. "I made a misfortune cookie. I wrote, 'Nobody likes you,' and gave it to my friend Matthew."
Many of the mostly female crowd of teens shared Jordan's Valentine's Day skepticism.
"I don't think I have ever gotten chocolates from anybody on Valentine's Day to really be included in Valentine's Day," said 13-year-old Faith Haines.
"Me and my friends call it Gal-entine's Day, because, we're girls," said Maddy Haines, also 13, and a member of the teen advisory board that suggested holding the event on Friday the 13th. "It's Anti-Valentine's Day, so it's already creepy and it just makes it creepier."
If the sentiments were morose, the atmosphere was festive and the teens smiling. After doing crafts, the group moved into the library's main floor for karaoke, the teens banding together to belt out the lyrics to Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," and the B-52's "Love Shack."
"It's nice to just hang out with their friends," Schuiler said. "I like that it doesn't put pressure on them to have dates."
That's exactly what Faith was thinking too. She had been a little unlucky on Friday — her phone dying during the day after she lost her charger, cutting her off from the outside world for two hours, a fact she recalled with a self-aware laugh. But her luck changed when her friends were there at the library to meet her.
"It's really cool. It's like us being happy by being — by not being in relationships," she said, with laughs and smiles from her friends all around.
Reach staff writer Jon Kelvey at 410-857-3317 or jon.kelvey@carrollcountytimes.com.
