The time has come to cherish your lover, according to every store, mall, mail flyer, and roadside flower stand within sight. For months, hearts and candy and frighteningly adorable greeting cards have been thrust at us as constant and expensive reminders that if we love someone we’d better be ready to pay for it. Is this what love is?
Valentine’s Day is perceived as commercially enforced love, a day of gut-wrenching panic because it’s already Feb. 13 and the only things left are the elegant boxes of chocolate you’d have to sell a kidney to afford or the $2.99 bags of pink M&Ms at Walgreens, and you know that if you choose incorrectly you’ll be spending the next week replacing your slashed tires and keeping an eye out for incoming airborne dishware.
But that’s not it at all, guys. Stop a moment, put the M&Ms back, and calm down. The future of your relationship really isn’t at stake here. You don’t need to let Hallmark or those Whitman people pull your strings. All you need to do is show that you’re thinking about your lover, that you want to be with her and that the happiness of your very significant other is essential to your own. The true meaning of Valentine’s Day is not to impress your lover with how extravagant you are.
The true meaning of Valentine’s Day is to make other people sick of you.
My wife Teresa likes Chik-Fil-A, in much the same way that crackheads are moderately fond of little white rocks, and so last Valentine’s Day we went there for breakfast. When we arrived I “remembered” something in the car and she went on to order.
By the time she got to our booth I had set it with a linen tablecloth and napkins, silverware, and crystal goblets, with the soundtrack to “Chocolat” coming from a small CD player. I poured our sweet tea into the goblets, whereupon we toasted each other and dined while employees gawked and passing truckers stared.
We had a wonderful time, laughing and hugging and smiling at each other. But, best of all, I completely ruined the lives of every guy in that restaurant, every one to a man murdering me in his mind while wondering if he still had the receipt for the new vacuum cleaner he’d just finished wrapping. I’m willing to bet that my inexpensive morning meal directly resulted in a marked jump in De Beer’s stock.
Because I gave my wife the greatest gift of all: the despairing, bitter envy of a roomful of total strangers. Think about that as you plan your activities. Will the public example of your endless devotion make others insecure in their own relationships? When your lover brags about your evening, will everyone around her hear the words “because he loves me way more than your guy loves you, neener neener neener,” even though she didn’t — quite — say them out loud? The jealousy, the disgust, the annoyed looks, that’s what makes Valentine’s Day worthwhile.
One Valentine’s Day, when Teresa had an office job, the other women there were proudly showing off their new flowers while pointedly not looking at Teresa’s bare desktop. Suddenly the fax machine chirped and produced an obviously hand-drawn picture from me of a bouquet of roses, a bowl of strawberries, and the word “Tonight?” Teresa spent the rest of the day in a haze of warm smugness while her co-workers grumbled and dumped more water into their 12 Bud Premium Velvet SweetheartsTM Bouquets with Pre-Stamped Cards.
It doesn’t take a busload of cash, as long as you give her something to brag about. Take her to a playground at night and push her on the swing. Stick a canoe in the bathtub and go on a fearsome Amazon adventure together. Go ice-skating for the first time. Resheet the bed with bubble wrap. Anything, as long as she knows you truly love her, so she can tell her friends. You could even brag about your romantic life in, say, an online column that people all over the world can read.
Ha. Beat that.