Everyone get ready to carve their hearts out with a spoon: Valentine’s day is on its way. It’s a hopeless romantic’s dream (nightmare, rather) come true.
St. Valentine isn’t even a big deal. Roman Catholics erased the celebration of St. Valentine’s day from their calendar in the 1960’s. The Cherubs printed on Hallmark’s cards and the boxes of chocolates people end up eating alone in a dark room now only serve to mock our ignorance of Corporate America cashing in on our souls. Geoffrey Chaucer is credited with the creation of this sadistic holiday when he made mention of it in his poem Parlement of Foules. The idea of such a poem is particularly disconcerting, and I am especially concerned with the proposition of chickens starting a democratic government. Besides this, Chaucer didn’t understand what he was doing. Chaucer was a nobleman, a writer, and a wealthy man. Chaucer could have any woman he wanted, and now the average American teenager seven hundred years later suffers the consequences of his artistic portrayal of his own lust.
Of course now the wives and girlfriends will be in an uproar, but men agree: they just want more chocolate. Carrying their stuff, listening to them talk, and spending money on them doesn’t do anything to legitimize the relationship until they get a box of truffles. In return, maybe we’ll be lucky enough to get a Jonas Brother’s Valentine and as we tear in half the commercially manufactured phrase next to Nick Jonas’s face we can realize he’s far more successful than us and our dismally broken hearts don’t really amount to much when three guys with no musical talent can get their face on a Valentine.
I’m sure most will have iPods full of love song playlists on loop when the fourteenth comes around. Eighties love-pop is going to suddenly be appearing on many iTunes accounts. While I’m a big fan of good music, who could say no to Michael Bolton, Kool and The Gang, and for the really ambitious, some Barry Manilow. Don’t deny it, everyone’s listened to ‘Mandy’ and thought for at least a little bit it was an alright song.
But in all seriousness, there’s no reason to even fathom such ideas. Everyone knows as well as I, it’s going to be a not much of anything day. We’ll all just swap some candy with each other and call it a good time. Maybe some will be lucky enough to get a Disney Princess card pitched their way. It’s only when someone has a ‘significant’ other that something will really go down. Maybe a good friend of the guy will record the couple making-out in the hallway and put it on Facebook with Aladdin’s “A Whole New World” theme playing over it. Don’t be fooled, that’s all high school romance has ever amounted to be.
