He looked like the kind of lad that would headbutt you as soon as look at you. That was fortunate, because having a face like a human pit bull terrier probably helped deflect some of the slagging that would otherwise have greeted his choice of accessories, writes Breda O'Brien.
The heart-shaped helium balloon he was tugging along behind him, and the large bouquet he was carting in front of him, might have been at odds with his image, but it would have been a brave person who told him so.
Hearts were everywhere this week. Of course, Valentine's Day is a commercialised, tacky festival designed to boost card manufacturer's already bloated profits, but it is also a chance for people to say heartfelt things.
Funny, that, how many expressions invoke the heart. Put your heart into it. That's a heartless decision. Don't be half-hearted. He has the heart of a lion. My heart was in my mouth.
Of course, not all are positive. Our culture has some suspicion of those who let the heart rule the head. Women have traditionally been seen as emotional beings - unlike those models of rationality, men - and as a result have been seen as too soft-hearted to do the job that men were born to do: that is, ruling the world.
No matter how many figures of speech feature the heart, surely science has dispensed with the romantic notion that the heart is the site of emotions? Not to mention the fact that the ancient Greeks and Romans thought the liver had that role.
The real human heart is pretty removed from the young lad's balloon. It looks like something that should be found on a butcher's slab.
The heart is no more than a highly efficient pump forcing blood around the body. Or is that all that it is? Science is now beginning to explore hints that far from the head ruling the heart, that there is a stream of two-way traffic between them, and that in some ways, the heart is a more powerful influence.
Dr Alan Watkins, based in London, has worked for 20 years on what is called cardiac coherence. He sums up what has been learnt as follows.
Because the electrical activity of every muscle cell in the heart has to be co-ordinated with its neighbour (in order for the heart to contract properly) the heart generates 50 times more electrical power than the brain.
When a series of successive heart beats are synchronised the heart generates a coherent electrical signal. When the interval between successive beats is erratic the heart generates a chaotic electrical signal. The heart sends this "coherent" or "chaotic" signal to every cell in the body, influencing their function.
When the heart sends a chaotic signal to the brain the pre-frontal cortex is significantly inhibited, which impairs both perception and decision making. When the heart sends a coherent signal to the brain, the pre-frontal cortex is "switched on" enhancing perception and decision-making.
The heart has a powerful impact on the brain, and positive emotions are associated with effective brain functioning, whereas negative emotions such as anger can shut down higher brain functions. Most of us, most of the time, are sending chaotic signals to the brain from the heart.
Fortunately, heart coherence can be learnt by almost embarrassingly simple techniques that involve focusing on the physical heart area, breathing slowly and deeply, and re-experiencing a positive emotion. There are computer programmes and other gadgets that can give a visual representation of when you achieve coherence, but it can be easily achieved without them.
The aim is to reverse what most of us experience daily, which is shallow, stressed breathing, and a culture that encourages the constant cycling of negative emotions and thoughts through our systems. No wonder our hearts are in trouble, both literally and metaphorically.
We don't just neglect the heart as individuals. We neglect the relationships that nurture the heart. Even the physical health of the heart is affected by love. A 30-year-old study of 10,000 men with heart disease showed that those who answered "yes" to the question, "Does your wife show you her love?" had half the symptoms of the others. And the more risk factors the men had, such as high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure and stress, the more the wife's love protected them. It looks like we are hard-wired for love, and it is central to our survival. Yet while paying expensive lip-service to love, we do a pretty poor job of building and sustaining the conditions that nourish it. Our culture prioritises efficiency and wealth over successful relationships. Those priorities may literally be killing us, and they are certainly killing many relationships.
While there are those who remain happily single, and a much-loved aunt of mine was among them, most people want to have a stable, long-term relationship, and the majority still want the gold standard, marriage. Yet as David Quinn of the Iona Institute pointed out last week, the number of separated people in Ireland has climbed from 37,000 in 1986 to 134,000 in 2002. That's a lot of broken hearts. That's a lot of bewildered children.
No one sets out to be part of that statistic. A diocese in Croatia has sent a stern letter to the Irish bishops, advising them that they will not facilitate "wedding tourists" any longer. Apparently travel agents can now offer an attractive package where the wedding and honeymoon can take place in picturesque Croatia. It is annoying the Croatian diocese greatly that people seem to have thought more about the venue for the honeymoon than the nature of the sacrament they are embarking on.
Yet even those currently making the Croatian Church cross because of an apparently thoughtless approach to the responsibilities of marriage set out with high hopes. None of them want to end up in the family law courts. Yet some of them, and many others marrying in Ireland, will end up there.
We need a debate about marriage, about what makes it work, about the factors, both internal to the marriage and externally in the culture that make it so much harder to stay happily married today. We need to start heeding the heart, and not just once a year on Valentine's Day, when even the apparently ferocious can be tamed by love.