Valentine’s Day

Valentines Day is like so many other things in life – religion, politics, media… the people on the extremes always influence the mainstream and set the tone.  And not for the better.

A scroll through my Facebook news feed shows the same dynamic I see every year on Valentine’s Day.  A small percentage of the people post pictures of the flowers they received and gush about how they have the best significant-other to ever walk the earth.  Another small percentage posts passive-aggressive messages asserting that they’ve never had a boyfriend on Valentine’s Day, or else they’re complaining about having to look at all the flowers from the first group of people.  My favorite status update in the Facebook world was my friend Wendy: Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone!!! I hope you all have someone to put your arms around and tell them that you love them. I know I do!!!!!!!!!!!!

When I say that Wendy’s message was my favorite, I mean that it was the one that I found most ridiculous and laughable.  If you had ever met any of Wendy’s boyfriends or her ex-husband, you’d understand the depth of absurdity.  The guys Wendy dates can’t even be considered “settling” it’s more like “stooping.”  Or simply digging a hole and marrying the first thing that hits your shovel.  Her last boyfriend was unemployed and living with her on her salary alone.  Anytime she talked about breaking it off, he would threaten to kill himself.  She’s a great girl, but she was in this trainwreck of a relationship for years.  Even with a great deal of support from family and friends, it took her a very long time to break away from that relationship.  (And he did not die, he quickly moved in with someone else.)  Then she moved on to someone new with the same old issues.  She definitely seems to have a type: Attainable.

Wendy’s “I hope you have someone” message is an example of why Valentine’s Day gets such a bad rep.  It’s no better or worse than any other commercial holiday – but some people get carried away with trying to convince the rest of the world that their V-Day is so much better than everyone else’s; which leads many singles to get depressed and feel that theirs is so much worse (the “I’ve never had a boyfriend” message.) 

The truth is, most of us are in the middle.  Valentine’s Day is like any other day.  It is what you make of it.  Some of the best Valentine’s Days I’ve ever had were when I was single and doing some serious flirting.  One year I had flowers, candy and cards coming in from all over the place.  Single people need to stop letting the lovebirds façade get them down.  Valentines Day is better for singles – we can double dip!!  It’s a beautiful thing, people!!

If you’re a guy in a relationship and Valentine’s Day is coming up, you know that you’re going to be expected to do something for her.  If you’re a girl in a relationship, you probably start dropping hints in advance and know what to expect.  But if you’re single – the only pressure you have is the pressure you put on yourself.  Sure, if you’re in a public place on Valentine’s, you may have to put up with more PDAs than usual.  But if you don’t have “a valentine” you should use the same method that has worked since back in grade school.  You make a pretty box and let everyone know it’s available.  Then try to get as many people as possible to hand you a special valentine.  Believe me, it works.  But the first thing you have to do if you’re single is shake that feeling that everyone has something you don’t have.  Trust me, some of them are just flaunting something they don’t even have. 

I’ll remind you again next January, singles.  If you really want in on the Valentine’s Day hype, just start to network early.  You can have more than one valentine.  But can only get away with it if you’re single.

Here’s a horrible reason to have kids…

Now that the holiday season is over the desperate thoughts have long passed, but family members can drive you crazy in unexplainable ways.  I am in my thirties, my parents are in their late sixties.  We don’t have the same idea of fun.  Don’t get me wrong, they’re great people, but if you are in your thirties and single, and your parents have no grandchildren to dote on, the parent/child dynamic seems to stay at high school level.  I still don’t feel comfortable having boys over.

My folks are divorced, so for the Christmas holiday I did what I do every year, spend Christmas Eve with my mother, and then drive three hours to have Christmas again with my dad in the next day or two.  I realize married people do this traveling thing all the time to satisfy in-laws, but this is just me, by myself, going through the routine, spending time with everyone and making sure no one feels like I love the other one more.  It’s a lot of driving, usually when the weather is the worst, but I’ve been doing it for over ten years and it seems to be the best way to spend time together. 

It wasn’t until this year that I was walking with my dad, bored and playing the, “I don’t know, what do you want to do” game when I thought to myself,  “I wonder if I had a kid, if I could get away with staying home and having them come to visit me.”  It was not an idea I was considering, as much as a realization that this awkward relationship with my parents may have a lot to do with me being happily single at a time that they really want to be grandparents. 

Then I started to romanticize that if I had a kid, this need to entertain and the difficulty in trying to engage with them would be relieved.  I could just plop the thing down in front of my folks and let the kid take over.  They could gush over the little one, and we would never run out of things to talk about because we’d have all sorts of “kids say the darndest things” stories to laugh about. 

While that does sound easier than constantly trying to make conversation with my communication-challenged father, I have run the numbers and it’s not very cost-effective.  There’s also no guarantee that my plan will work and I’d hate to go to all that expense and nine months of pregnancy only to cave in and end up driving the same route between their houses at Christmas time, but with a carseat.