Valentine's Day Massacre

To many people reading this blog, it would come as no surprise that I have been single for every Valentine's Day that I have been lucky enough to witness in my life. It's because of this fact that I can sit back and laugh at all the poor saps that happen to be coupled up on this most ridiculous of days.

A lot of the time I claim that Valentine's Day is just a day created by the greeting card industry and/or Russell Stover's great-grandfather. Sometimes I look at it as the day that women across the country raise the bar and expect their significant others to one-up themselves from previous years. Certainly not something in which I'd like to be entangled.

Today I decided to make a trip to Target. There were a few things that I needed to get, most of all I needed some tissues and some cold medicine, as I am still dealing with a poorly timed illness. I was struck by the sheer volume of men standing in front of the greeting card display. What surprised me further was the amount of women that were also perusing the pre-printed Valentines.

Traditionally, men are the forgetful ones. As we have learned from any number of sitcoms, men have a difficult time remembering birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and most especially, Valentine's Day. It's a little perplexing, it falls on the same day every year. Though, that argument could be made for anniversaries and birthdays. But you can't go out and buy a calendar at your local Barnes & Noble and expect to have your loved ones' birthdays and anniversaries printed in the proper squares. Valentine's Day, however, is printed right there on February 14. Just like the word Christmas is printed in that little box for December 25. They even manage to get Easter on there, and that falls on a different date each year.

The women that were doing their last-minute Valentine shopping, though, that still puzzles me. When is it too late to go out and buy a card? I'm sure there are a lot of people, mostly the ones I referred to in that 2nd paragraph, that feel that if everything isn't as it should be when they first wake up on February 14, it's already too late to redeem the day.

Why this day? Why should there be one special day when people who supposedly love each other should be forced to "prove" it with gifts of chocolate and cards containing someone else's words? Why can't those people, who seem so desperate to prove their love, show their love every other day of the year?

I know that these are just the words of a lonely, bitter old man. Take them with a grain of salt.