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"I made a sand castle based on floor plans from your childhood home."

Hey, this former fudge-making girl gets the appeal of sweet sappy gestures. I've written poetry for guys I liked. I've made mix tapes and playlists. Hell, I've even sewn things for guys. And I've included all kinds of grand romantic gestures in books I've written. The entertainment industry has been living on the sweet romantic gesture long before love-struck '90s kids held boomboxes over their heads. When it comes to love, we're trained to think that bigger is better.

In movies, it doesn't even matter how jerky your gesture is. In the grand cheerleading epic Bring It On, the cute guy who recently did an NCIS cameo (Jesse Bradford) shows up at head cheerleader Kirsten Dunst's house with a cassette tape of a song he wrote for her. The song starts off with him insulting the most important thing in her life, before telling her he wants to feed her chocolates and screw her in a barn. Because it's a movie, she starts dancing on her bed in her pajamas and spanking herself with her pompoms.

Universal Pictures

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This is not love.

In real life, there are just so many ways to get it wrong.

First off, a big gesture has to be really good. Bad amateur poetry and crappy artwork is just sad. Beyond that, there's no faster way to look creepy than to come on way too strong ... which makes music especially dangerous, because there aren't that many songs with lyrics like "Hey, I think you're kind of cute and I'd like to maybe go out sometime, if that's cool with you."