Someone asked me the other day what the most memorable gift was that I've ever received on Valentine's Day. I didn't even have to think twice. For while the young man who gave it to me is long gone from my life, the gift is still with me, at this moment, here in 2008, residing faithfully at the bottom of my purse.

I suppose it's a memorable gift because it stands out, stubby and practical, amid the sea of far more romantic chocolate hearts, red flowers, and other more lavish -- yet less remarkable -- gifts I've received since then. And although it seemed the antithesis of romance at the time, I've come to feel differently about it, over the passage of time.

Like so many of the things we take at face value when we're young, this particular gift was, as I remember, an incredible disappointment at the moment I received it.

My boyfriend and I were celebrating Feb. 14, the day of Big Love and Romance, at a beautiful Japanese restaurant overlooking the city, when the small box was whisked out of his jacket pocket and put on the table in front of me as we shared dessert and coffee.

Of course that's the time-honored way of commemorating the day, isn't it? Share a meal, along with all the romantic masses and their equally romantic significant others, at some over-priced restaurant where the food is so-so and the parking is impossible. The food. The wine. The small box, appearing next to your dessert plate.

In this case, the box looked about the size to hold a small bracelet, or possibly a necklace and some matchy-matchy earrings. And, sad to say, at 25 years of age those were exactly the kinds of things I was hoping for. Some symbol that I could wear that would show the world that the relationship I was in was stable and predictable; going down a well-worn road where the gifts and the routines were following an acceptable norm and pattern.

So when I opened the box and lifted out the small Swiss Army knife, I'm sure some kind of confusion, and maybe even disappointment registered on my face. I don't remember now. But I do remember feeling that somehow, we'd taken a detour over what was expected on this day, at our age and stage in life, and I felt sad and left out as the other ladies in the restaurant opened their little gift boxes of pearls and lapel pins.

The Swiss Army knife was deposited in the bottom of my purse, and not much was said about it after that. And a few months later, when I left for a months-long backpacking trip across Europe, I stuck it in the bottom of my day pack as sort of an afterthought -- just in case I ran into a situation where I needed it. And over the next six months, it turned out I needed it a lot.

I first used it to pry open a tin of olives for a family I met traveling on the train through rural France, and in return they shared their picnic lunch with me -- bread, olives, summer sausage and wine -- as we memorably attempted conversation, ate, and rode across the French countryside. It was the ice-breaker that overcame the fact that they spoke no English and I, no French.

I used the bottle opener of the Swiss Army knife to uncork various vintages across Italy and Greece, in a variety of social situations. The tweezers removed a splinter from the finger of a fellow traveler in the Austrian Alps, and the scissors to fashion a toga out of a sheet for an impromptu costume party in London.

And as the years have gone by, I've realized that maybe the Swiss Army knife was more than an just an oddball gift. Maybe it was not only incredibly romantic but also incredibly personal.

What if it was given to me in recognition of who I was at the time -- a woman poised to go out into the world and become an adventuress; a gal who would embrace the unpredictable and spontaneous; one who would need a multi-purpose tool to accompany her during a multi-purpose life?

Is it possible that the man who gave this girl the gift already saw her as something less common and more individualistic than even she did at the time? Maybe.

Regardless, my Swiss Army knife has been symbol of that adventuring spirit, as I've forged through 20 years of adventures that have followed my receiving it.

And so, everyone, why not think a little bit outside the box for Valentine's Day this year? Skip the overcrowded restaurant and matchy-matchy jewelry set, and instead think about embracing the uncommon virtues of the one you love.

Buy them a book of poetry. An awl. A Siamese Fighting Fish. Buy them a Swiss Army knife.

Because it's the uncommon gift, like the uncommon life, that's often the most memorable and treasured.

Diane Sayre is a freelance writer living in Hanford. Her column appears weekly in the Sentinel. Readers can write to her at The Hanford Sentinel, P.O. Box 9, Hanford, CA 93232.

(Feb. 11, 2008)