A song for Valentine’s Day

Now, don’t get me wrong.  As Miracle Max said, True Love is almost as good as a nice MLT (where the tomato is ripe and perky).  The fact that I am, apparently, destined to belong to the Great Spinsterhood has very little to do with my complete antipathy for the hearts-and-flowers of February 14.

Very little, I said; I can’t in complete honesty say absolutely nothing …

*ahem*

Anyway. It’s no more fun being single on this day than I imagine it is to be without family on Christmas or Thanksgiving.  But – in absolute honesty – that’s not the main reason.

My repugnance for the day stems partly from memories of harassed men hastening into the pharmacy where I had my first job right before closing.  They would run to aisle 7, where the candy was, and stare, dismayed, at the three-foot-high heart-shaped boxes that were all that was left (more prudent men having already cleaned the place out of normal-sized boxes), and then they’d move over a couple of aisles to stare, dismayed, at the monstrous-sized Valentines that were the only ones left in the card racks.  And they would ask me pitifully if V-day stuff wasn’t on sale yet?  It wasn’t.  They’d pony up anyway, because they knew the fate waiting for them if they showed up home (or wherever) empty-handed.  It was pathetic.  It happened every year. And I prayed I’d never be that type of harpy who inspired such terror, and that I’d never have a man in my life who was so … feckless.

Maybe that’s why I’m perpetually single.  Prayers are answered, and not always in the way you expect.  Hm.

That was a major contributor to my deep-set contempt for pre-manufactured expressions of affection.  I just can’t see myself opening up a box of Russell Stovers (especially one of the ones that come wrapped by Russell Stover – for heaven’s sake at least put a bow on the thing) or a cellophane-enveloped bunch of roses with a Stop & Shop label on it – and being happy about it.  Don’t get me started on diamonds.  (Talk about your manufactured sentiment and non-existent tradition … DeBeers has mastered the advertising campaign, to the point that it’s unthinkable that diamonds were ever not necessary for an engagement ring.) I doubt I’d turn my nose up at it, out of courtesy if nothing else – but I think I’d be a little disappointed.  There’s no authenticity of any emotion connected with that. To me that doesn’t say “I love you” – it just says “You demand I give you stuff on February 14, and I know if I don’t I’m sleeping on the couch, so here, I went to the drug store or the grocery store and got you what all the other guys were getting.  Oh, and here’s a sickly pink stuffed bear holding a big fat heart.  Happy now?”

The main reason I hate Valentine’s Day – beside the fact that the date is apparently (depending on where you look) based on when birds begin to pair up and has nothing to do with Valentine except the coincidence that it was his feast day – is the same horror that fills me with Christmas and Easter.  Easter ain’t about the bunny, kids, and Christmas should not be symbolized by the jolly red-suited man.  And the holidays should not be about handing over lots and lots (and lots) of money to Hallmark and Russell Stover.  It makes me queasy that there are probably millions of kids who have no idea of Christmas or Easter beyond the commercial symbols, and it just baffles me how the candy and greeting card companies completely own February 14.  (Some day I’ll look into the history – commercial valentines have been around a long time, apparently, at least into Victorian years.  So Hallmark isn’t entirely to blame.)

(For the matter of all of that I’m none too thrilled with the trivialization of the Irishness of St. Patrick’s Day – no, everyone is *not* Irish on March 17: getting drunk does not equal getting Irish.  But I digress.)

To me, a genuine expression of love on a random day would be massively more romantic than all the cards and chocolates and force-grown roses in all the grocery stores in the world.  This has been your annual pink-Grinch post.  Your mileage may vary, a chacun son gout, and may wuv, twoo wuv, fowwow you fowever.

Me? I am a rock. I am an island.

 

I hate Valentine’s Day.

I never realized how much red and pink clothing I have until I had to reject as much as I did this morning.  I used to wear pretty much all black and blue and gray, until I realized I was wearing all black and blue and gray (probably after watching What Not To Wear), and branched out (though except for one deep rose denim shirt, anything pink I own was a wrong-headed gift.  I rarely do pink).  I didn’t really intend to wear black today – that’s a statement I didn’t want to make, I simply declined to wear red or pink… but black was all I had clean and pressed and not from that end of the spectrum.  *shrug*

I’ll be honest – of course part of the reason I hate V-Day is that at no other time of year is the media’s attitude quite so in your face about how worthless life is without Love.  They don’t hedge about it, either: probably half a dozen tv shows both scripted and reality in the last year have featured some extremely wise person who earnestly proclaims that love is the only, only thing worth living for.

Thanks, then, my vacant life having been deemed worthless, I’ll just be slitting my wrists now – or should I go the folk ballad route and fling myself into a stream? 

In all seriousness, I’m astonished if the suicide rate does *not* increase around now.  It’s brutal out there. 

From: http://silhouettemasterpiecetheatre.com/

Most of the time, I’m fine with old maidenhood.  Spinsterhood.  Being on the shelf.  Though the world insists otherwise, I don’t see that I need someone else to make my life complete.  I’m sure it would be very pleasant, it never happened, so … It is, as they say, what it is.  It’s just now, with the relentless barrage of PDA’s, that a few shots make it through the barricades, and I feel it.  (The airing of Emma right on target to hit me during the monthly Slough of Despond didn’t help, I have to say.)

But apart from that basic bitterness, Feb. 14 is a very bad anniversary.  It was four years ago today that the announcement went up on the original Board Which Shall Remain Nameless that instead of doing as they’d been promising for the four years I’d been a member and fixing the original message boards so that they didn’t crash every fourteen minutes, they were going to abandon ship and move to a new …everything.  And that was the beginning of the end, for me at least, though I know several people I cared about dropped away much more quietly than I did at the same time.  It was broke, and they didn’t fix it – they kicked it to the curb and started over, and the new board was shiny and new – and it was chrome and steel where the old boards were oak-panelled and comfy (if somewhat threadbare in places).  I really do hate Valentine’s Day. 

Mainly though, and as long as I can remember, there is always the simple fact that … I don’t get it.  Even if I were in a relationship, I can’t see myself being happy because he, having been poked and prodded and nudged and reminded by every commercial and DJ and newsanchor for the past two weeks, arrived with flowers and chocolate.  I worked retail too long: I saw the men who flocked into the store just before closing on February 13 – and, even better, closing on Feb. 14 – to pick up the random pink stuffed whatever or box of anything they could find.  I always derived some sadistic pleasure that a good many of these guys had to choose between the cheap stuff that tasted like something made by people who had heard of chocolate and never tasted it, and the great big huge expensive heart boxes – because that was all that was left.  Oh, and the monster two-foot high cards, also all that was left.  Hee.  That was fun.  But … isn’t this sort of like someone apologizing only after having it clearly pointed out that an apology was owed?  “I’m sorry for whatever it is I’m supposed to be sorry for”?  If it’s not something done with intent, what’s the point?  “I demand a present!”  “What would you like?”  “That! *points*”  “If the six hundred thousand commercials and your nagging are enough to remind me, I will buy it, just to keep out of the doghouse.”  Why?  Just to create an excellent opportunity to make people miserable when they forget or are forgotten (or have no one to forget or be forgotten by)? 

Oh, and balloons?  I hate balloons. 

On the sitcom The Middle, the father, Mike, spent the whole episode last week ranting about how V-Day is a vast gimmick cooked up by the greeting card companies and chocolate makers to drum up business.  And he’s wrong how?  And have you seen the price of greeting cards lately?  

http://a.abc.com/media/_global/swf/embed/2.6.5/SFP_Walt.swf

That’s it, I’m shuttin’ it down!  You guys shouldn’t be celebrating Valentine’s Day anyway because it’s a scam cooked up by the greeting card companies.  You know what you should be doing?  You should be studying.  ‘Cause guess what they’re doing in China right now?  They are doing math, and they are learning how to be CEO’s of greeting card companies so they can sell us American’s a heart-shaped load o’ crap!

Thing is, though, I can’t help but think I would be either really easy (so to speak) or really difficult on V-Day.  I wouldn’t want flowers – I hate cut flowers, as they’re dead in a day or so, and I’m not good with plants (black thumb).  A stuffed thing?  Unless it’s astonishingly adorable – and I have been known on occasion to find certain fluffy creatures irresisitible – no.  I’m an adult.  I have no use for an ugly pink whatever with something sappy stitched on it.  Chocolate – sure, any time, but I am going to raise an eyebrow if the best a man can do is a pre-wrapped box of Russell Stover.  (I can’t imagine who the appropriate recipient is for a pre-wrapped box of Russell Stover; secretary?  Nurse at a relative’s bedside?  Kid’s teacher?  Even then … Oh, sorry to have put you to so much trouble – wasn’t there something you could have put less effort into? /sarcasm)  Good chocolate, now – that shows at least a little thought.  As for jewelry … Again, I’m either particularly easy or hard, because I don’t like gold and wouldn’t want diamonds.  I’m a simple soul; I wouldn’t ever want expensive jewelry.  What on earth would I do with it?  And I’m hell on jewelry; I can’t tell you how many half-pairs of earrings I own, because the other half vanished from my ear.  My favorite pendant first broke and then vanished entirely; it was a little knight, 1″ tall, whose arms and legs were jointed and whose tiny visor went up to reveal his (rough-carved) face.  All I have now is the arm that snapped off.  So that’s one strike against jewelry – if I were to wear something pricey I’d be a nervous wreck.  Most of all, though, I think both eyebrows would rise if someone were to gift me with one of those mass-produced diamond-studded things for which commercials flood the airwaves around now and every other remotely gift-y holiday.  (Trick or treat?  Treat!  Give your special someone an Open Hearts necklace for Halloween!)  I can’t help but wonder why in the world I would want the same piece of jewelry 321,610 other women have been given over the last twenty-eight or so holidays.  Something hand-made, something unique – not necessarily expensive: go to eBay and search for “steampunk”, and good things appear - would, to me, mean a huge amount more than some kind of diamond-chip-crusted whatever empty of meaning. 

And I know I’m beginning to sound male here, but … the connection between the day and the martyr – who was apparently beheaded, unless you mean one of the other ones – is specious.  There might be some kind of connection to Lupercalia – and having read Roma, that’s not exactly in keeping with what the day is now.  There would be mass arrests if Lupercalia was celebrated properly.  It’s all a great deal like Coca Cola creating the modern image and pervasiveness of Santa Claus and diamonds being force-fed to the country as THE engagement ring: it’s all a marketing campaign that would do Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce proud.   I think that’s sad.