Wife and Mother of Two Reserves Right to Begrudge Valentine's Day

FULTON, Mo.- Happily married mother of two Nicole Samson still looks upon Valentine's Day as the bane of her existence. Nicole, 38, has mourned the holiday ever since Billy Johnson publicly refused her Valentine in the fifth grade.

"I don't understand her ailment," Hank Samson, Nicole's husband said. "When we first met in June of 1994 she was happy as a bug. Always enjoying our dates and getting me presents for no reason other than she loved me...Our courtship almost turned sour when I attempted to take her out for a nice Valentine's dinner the following year. She slapped me so hard I lost vision in my right eye for five hours!"

Nicole's parents have also noticed this trend. "I tried to tell her that Billy Johnson was a nobody, and that she shouldn't concern herself with his attitude. 'Plenty of fish in the sea,' her father said. But she wouldn't listen. She's ornery, that one," Susan Gomery, Nicole's mother said. "She won't even accept presents from us. She flat out refuses to speak to anyone. If Hank has to work we have to watch the children because she utterly neglects them on this the day of Love," Artie Gomery said sorrowfully of his daughter.

Aside from being watched by their grandparents, Nicole and Hank's children, Danielle, 5, and Ethan, 8, are deeply affected by their mother's depression. Hank said it is common of her to lock herself away in her bedroom with copious amounts of ice cream and chocolates, all of which she consumes herself in a frantic and unhealthy fashion. She often screams obscenities at romance movies and cries bloody murder while pounding her head against the south-facing wall of the room. Any attempt at communication with her is hopeless. "If she directly responds to anyone at all it's usually a demand for them to go to H-E-double hockey sticks. No, she's best to be left alone on the 14th," Hank says with obvious distress.

A neighbor told us that last year they heard the wailings of Nicole Samson through their own residence's walls. "It was unbearable, (the noise is) worse than any party the Nilson's throw on a football weekend. Those poor, wretched children," neighbor Monique Anders said.