U.S. - According to reports from around the nation, husbands in every state, city, and town are currently wandering the Valentine's Day section at various local stores.
This morning, employees at Rite Aid, CVS, Target, Wal-Mart, and literally any other store in the country that stocks last-minute Valentine's Day gifts braced for the inevitable flood of men descending upon their retail locations throughout the afternoon and into the early evening hours. Sure enough, as the day progressed, an increasing number of desperate-looking boyfriends, husbands, and fiances stormed their stores, wandering the seasonal section "like a horde of mindless zombies."
One man in Connecticut was seen staring at a heart-shaped balloon for over an hour. Another man in Anchorage has been in the seasonal section of his local Target for over four hours. When Target workers approached him and asked "Can I help you find something?" he reportedly began breaking down in sobs and fled the store on foot.
"Does my wife like chocolate?" another husband asked an employee, who gently informed him that she didn't know his wife's preferences. "What about a giant teddy bear? I think I've seen that in the movies. I'm sure that'll be a hit." The retail worker tried to steer him away from the giant teddy bears but was unsuccessful, sealing his fate.
Husbands all over were seen digging through piles of cheap Valentine's Day gifts and ransacking the Hallmark section looking for something, anything that would make it seem like they put a lot of thought into the holiday celebrating love and romance. A riot even broke out in Alabama as two men fought over the final box of chocolates at a local pharmacy. A police officer arrived to defuse the situation but then remembered he needed a gift and so confiscated the box of chocolates as "evidence."
At publishing time, thousands of desperate husbands had settled for a gift card.