10 Reasons to Stay Home on V-Day
Posted: Sunday, February 12, 2012
by Lama Mama
Regardless of its history, Valentine's Day has become more about seeing who can pee higher on the tree than about thoughtful expressions of affection. V-Day is crunch time, the Super Bowl of Spousal Obligation, the Grand Prix of Boyfriendom.
Notice I didn't mention women. That wasn't an oversight. Visit Amazon.com's "Valentine's Day Gifts for Your Sweetie" page and do a totally non-scientific visual count of the stuff they're hawking. There are 17 gift images geared toward women, 4 gift images geared toward men, 2 gender-neutral images and one aimed at parents who, in spite of conventional wisdom regarding the "meaning" of the holiday, obviously feel compelled to shower their kids with red and pink junk, too.
God help him if the other guys came up with more spectacular V-Day packages for their women.
And if, for some reason, you do NOT have a SO on Valentine's Day, prepare to be reminded of the shameful loneliness of your unattached state by every commercial, ad, billboard, store and co-worker you come in contact with. Society is blunt about it: if you're single on V-Day, you suck.
I haven't celebrated Valentine's Day since 1997. I remember that year, because I had a boyfriend, he was a loser, and he decided to go out with his friends instead of take me out. So I went out to eat by myself.
(P.S. Having the balls to sit at a table-for-one on February 14 gets you the best service you've ever had in your life. The waiters doted on me, flirted with me and brought me free dessert. I actually had one of the best V-Days of my life that year. But I digress.)
Even as a married woman, neither my husband nor I feel any compulsion to go out and celebrate a relatively minor holiday that seems to focus primarily on spending way too much on things you have no use for. When people go pop-eyed when we tell them our V-Day will be spent mucking around the house and doing our usual evening stuff, I pull out some very good reasons to ignore the day altogether:
- Any restaurant that you would have any desire to eat at, and qualifies as romantic, is already overbooked. That means you'll be sitting elbow-to-elbow with dozens of other couples pretending to have privacy as a harassed and overworked waitstaff tries to keep everyone's orders straight.
- Retailers specializing in V-Day gifts jack up their prices in honor of the occasion. even the stuff advertised as being on "sale" either has a dismal discount (like 10% off) or had its price artificially inflated so the discount would sound more impressive.
- Whitman's Samplers taste nasty. So do most of the other mass-market chocolates sold at this time. On V-Day, you're paying for the packaging, not the contents.
- The obsession over chocolate is a cruel trick to play on everyone who resolved to lose weight in the new year. As a devoted boyfriend/husband, you are obligated to buy the biggest freaking box of candy you can lay hands on. As a grateful girlfriend/wife, you are obligated to at least eat some of it. And even though you can try and take it to the office and leave it in a conspicuous spot in the breakroom, everyone else is plotting to do the exact same thing.
- The over-demand for long-stem roses results in an available selection that is grotesquely overpriced and unlikely to survive more than 24 hours. When stores need 4 billion roses delivered over a one- or two-day span, quality is the first thing to go.
- Most people haven't recieved their tax refund by February 14, so chances are you're putting the whole V-Day bill on credit. When you add up dinner for two at a swanky joint, wine, flowers, something sparkly in a box and possibly some other activity (movie, theater, gondola ride -- whatever), you're looking at a minimum of 500 bucks blown on a single evening. That's a big chunk of change, unless you're of the class of people who own houses with more bathrooms than bedrooms.
- I don't find pressure of performance to be romantic. V-Day comes regardless of whether you've had a rotten day at work, you are recovering from a sinus infection, you've been working 50-hour weeks, your car's in the shop (again) or you've got a giant bandage on two of your fingers because that window that will never shut properly gave way without warning and mashed them to a pulp. And then you've got to go out and display a properly lovey-dovey demeanor. I say screw it.
- If you've got kids, it is absolutely impossible to find a sitter on that night. You'd have better luck finding one on Thanksgiving. All the teenagers are off on their own V-Day adventures and you feel guilty asking anyone you know is single because it feels like you're rubbing their face in it.
- Man, I hate pink. Why does EVERYTHING associated with V-Day have to be pink? In the Middle Ages, green was the color of true love. Why couldn't we have just stuck with that?
- Men typically suck at picking out jewelry. And the jewelry store owners, knowing this, will try to push all manner of poorly-designed garbage on their unsuspecting prey. And then you have to pretend to love it. And there's no way you're asking for the reciept. (Mercifully, most men will never notice whether or not you've actually ever worn it. Call that the silver-plated lining.)
This Article has been viewed 490 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)This made me laugh! And reading through your bio, of course I want to ask - what's your day job?!My day job involves newspapers, interior design, parrot rescue support, bookkeeping, psychotherapy, hand-sanding, public relations, billing, lunatic management, fundraising, primary source research on medieval firearms, curbside scrounging and quality control. Then, when I get HOME, I have three kids who need dinner, attention, mediation services and "age-appropriate stimulus."
Like I said -- you don't want to know. ; )
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.