Ken and I met and saw each other just three times before he left for Vietnam. He never gav

e me flowers or candy. There were no moonlight walks, no lingering good-byes on the front porch. Our courtship took place by mail.

I felt sorry for him, far from home in the service of his country. Writing to him seemed almost a patriotic duty. But as we got better acquainted, our letter-writing pace increased—to as many as three a day. I started driving home at lunch to collect the mail.

Then Ken came back in leave, and we surprised ourselves by getting mantled and going overseas together. Romantic？ Not really, because then he left on a three-week mission, making our honeymoon a by-mail event too.

We didn't set out to defy romantic customs; it just turned out that way, and stayed that way. We had been married seven years before we remembered our anniversary—and then only because my mother phoned to wish us a happy one. It took another ten years for us to notice Valentine's Day.

To celebrate our alertness that year, we decided to have a conventionally romantic evening; a quiet, just-the-two-of-us dinner at a nice restaurant.

When we arrived at the restaurant, we were told there would be a 40-minute wait, and so we headed for another nice, but not so romantic place. About halfway to our second choice, Ken realized that the restaurant would not honor our credit card and we were low on cash. I sighed and said, "I do have enough for a fast-food place." Clearly, we were veering far off the conventional coupe.

While Ken placed the order, I gathered napkins and straws and went to select a romantic spot in the nonsmoking area. There I found a woman methodically turning chairs up onto tables. "This section's closed," she said.

"But it's the only nonsmoking section," I protested. She pointed across the room. "You can sit over there."

"That's the smoking section," I argued.

"I know," she said. "But you don't have to smoke."

I started to protest but stopped to choke back a laugh. Maybe because she thought I was going to cry, she removed the opened chairs from a table and said, "This okay？" I thanked her and, after she had gone, sat giggling until Ken arrived with the hamburgers.

Surrounded by a forest of upside-down chair legs, we had our Valentine dinner. It wasn't exactly quiet, with grill workers yelling at each other in the kitchen past the swing door near our table. But it was just the two of us, if you didn't count the person with the mop who kept humping our chairs.

According to the context, "flowers or candy, moonlight walks, lingering good-byes" are to indicate ______.

A．some examples of conventional customs

B．an intimate friendship

C．a special relationship

D．an ordinary acquaintance