It’s Valentine’s Day and you forgot again, didn’t you? She was expecting candy or flowers or a card or at least something. Boy, are you in trouble!

Here’s some advice from your ol’ Uncle Burtie — tell her you left it right there on the steps. Of course, you’ll want to actually slip something on the stairs first.

If you tell her it’s been right there in plain sight on the stairs for months, she’ll be forced to believe you, because nobody ever sees anything that was left on the steps.

(Do not try this with flowers — fresh posies are a dead giveaway, by which I mean you’re dead.)

Steps are perhaps nature’s greatest master of disguise. Chameleons can only change colors, and their range is limited. The octopus not only changes colors, but textures as well.

But stuff left on the steps simply turns invisible. Stairs to the family are like refrigerators to husbands — nobody sees anything. No matter how many people run up the steps, not a single person will scoop up the item and take it upstairs where it belongs.

Instead, the upstairs denizens will bellow from their rooms, “Where are my shoes?” “Who hid my hairbrush?” and “Someone stole Fluffy!”

At which point, someone downstairs, usually a mother who has had it up to here, will snap, “It’s on the stairs! You clomped right by it 100 times. Pick up your stuff and put it away!”

I don’t know who invented the put-it-on-the-steps-for-the-next-person-to-take-upstairs method of housekeeping. It’s never worked. But some domicile dwellers keep trying.

Most American households are loaded with invisible stuff on the steps at least two-thirds of the way up the stairs.

The most common of these is laundry. If you are a guest in someone’s home and can’t find a towel in the upstairs bathroom, there’s a pile of them neatly folded on the stairs. Feel around until you find them.

While you’re grabbing the towels, be kind — take the row of washcloths on the next step with you. For decorum’s sake, you probably ought to ignore the socks and underwear on four or five of the other steps.

It’s not polite to go through your host’s dresser drawers, even if you are putting invisible laundry away where it can be seen.

A friend of mine creates beautiful place settings on a gorgeous antique table in her dining room. No matter when I pop in, there’s nothing on the table except a fancy tablecloth, elegant plates and silverware, and seasonal decorations.

It’s scary. At any other home I’ve ever visited, the table is a magnetic force that draws any random object within 50 feet to fill any available space. A typical household staircase boasts 12 to 15 steps. That’s 12 to 15 flat surfaces that nature itself says must be filled.

Anyone in the household who has stuff that needs to go upstairs but feels too lazy to climb those 12 to 15 steps drops it onto the black hole that is disguised as innocent, ordinary steps.

In households where I have lived, next-trip-up debris crammed to the right side of the stairs eventually spread two-thirds or more of the way up the stairs.

Stepping past piles going up the stairs isn’t bad. The greater danger is coming downstairs — which can happen six times faster than intended, especially in these modern times when people glue their noses to electronic screens instead of watching where they step.

Later, in the emergency room, the doctor reviews the paramedic’s notes: “Patient descending stairs slipped on folded bath towels, a sneaker and a Slinky. Sling not applied to fractured arm as the Slinky already fulfilling the role. Patient will require extrication from Slinky.”

The patient shakes his head, which dislodges a Lego from his ear. “I could swear that there was nothing on the steps. I didn’t see a thing.”

Of course not. Stuff left on steps turns invisible.

So tell your sweetie that you left her Valentine’s Day gift on the steps where she would see it.

Or, if you’re that rare woman who forgot, tell your husband you left his box of chocolates in the refrigerator right next to his beverage of choice so he’d be sure to see it. You know and he knows that he wouldn’t have even if it had actually been there.

Or just stick with the steps, because no one ever sees anything left on the steps.

Leave notes for Burt at burton.w.cole@gamil.com, on the Burton W. Cole page on Facebook, or on the stairs. He’ll trip over it eventually.