It’s Valentines Day. Bah Humbug.
I’ve never gotten along much with VD. My earliest memories of the holiday are the grade school valentine exchanges. It was always somewhat the same, an event to make your “mailbox” and then sit back and watch the little envelopes flow in. The latter being true only under certain circumstances however. If the teacher was of an equal opportunity mindset, everyone had to given a valentine to everyone else. Or, in the free distribution model, you only needed to give valentines to whomever you wanted, a situation where it was made obvious who was and was not popular by the quantity of cards received. I was not in the favored crowd, a fact painfully driven home while Miss or Mister popular next to me was all smiles in a sea of white and red.
Moving into high school, valentine cards were replaced with carnation days. Student could buy flowers for a small fee, to be delivered to the recipient during classes. During carnation day, lectures were frequently interrupted with deliveries as well the commotion of the recipient having to make room on the small desks for their long-stemmed flowers. The reigning popular crowd was easy to spot with their bunches, as were the not-so-popular with the conspicuous lack of floral adornment.
Post high school, it became clear Valentines Day was a holiday for couples. If you were one half of a two-some, great. If not, sucks to be you, lonely loser pants. One year, a couple invited out to dinner with them, possibly because they were feeling sorry for me, but who knows. The dinner was great, until later that night when I got sick and then spent next 48 hours with my head in the toilet, thanks to a particularly nasty case of food poisoning.
I think it was sometime around then that I quit Valentines Day. I was tired of being made to feel alone and left out if I happened to be single, and I was equally tired of companies trying to make me think things had to be done a certain way if I was in a relationship. I don’t want to eat at a packed restaurant that is trying to turn tables as fast as possible, and while flowers are nice, I don’t want anyone to pay double than they would have to on any other day.
So what will I do today? For starters, today will be like every other Monday
Bravo. It’s such a bullshit made-up holiday. I don’t need a Hallmark-day to prove to someone I love them.