Whiny

I know this is petty and whiny, but whatever. It's my blog. You don't have to read this post if you don't want to.

so here goes:

For the love of Mike, why are they doing stories about Valentine's Day on the local news already?!?!?!?! I turned on the local news channel to see about the weather - because it got very cold here over night, supposedly, and I wanted to know just how cold it was going to be so I could plan to dress appropriately (maybe no one around here has ever heard of that concept; certainly some of my students seem not to have).

But NOOOOOOO. They had the set all dolled up with pink, white, and red flowers, teddy bears, heart balloons. All that crap. They had a local florist on supposedly doing a story on pre-ordering for Valentine's Day. (But which was really a pretty transparent free-advertising piece for the florist. My local news does this All. The. Time. Any time a big gift-giving holiday comes up, they get local stores on to ostensibly talk about it but really to hawk their wares. Every time there's something like St. Patrick's Day, or Fourth of July, or some other holiday that people might conceivably go out to eat, there's some local restauranteur put on to remind people that he's open and serving. It makes me wild because not only is it free advertising during the actual program, but they will spend long amounts of loving attention on it - and then not talk about stuff like, oh, I don't know, the fact that there is an escaped felon at large in the community. I kind of would prefer knowing whether or not I risked being taken hostage on my way to work than that the local beer joint is doing a corned beef and cabbage special for St. Patty's)

And Valentine's Day puts me in a bad mood anyway. Yes, I know, it's childish. It's getting worked up over something small. But it's got to be one of the most damn exclusive "holidays" out there. The only worse thing would be to declare a day "Married Couple with Biological Children Day!" - so the divorced parents, childless couples, and people who adopted can be made to feel like failures.

Because, Valetine's Day, even though I try not to let it, does make me feel a little bit like a failure. The one thing I have not managed to achieve in my life is a long-term relationship (preferably marriage). Part of it is that I'm picky. Part of it is probably it wasn't in the cards for me, for whatever reason is unknown to me (and God? If you're listening? I hope it's a REALLY good reason).

I hate Valentine's Day for other, more abstract, reasons: it is telling people that they need to "demonstrate" their love for that Special Someone with some kind of a gift, preferably an expensive one. It, in some cases, is almost presented as a Get Out Of Jail Free card - that is, it's OK to crab at your husband other days of the year, it's OK to ignore that your wife is about to melt down and has asked you three times to help her get the kids ready for school - because you've bought flowers or candy or something.

But I have to admit the real nugget of burning dislike I have for the day is that it allows people who are part of a couple to be smug and exclusive and to say "Look what I got!" (and yes, I've had people do that to me - women come by SPECIFICALLY to show me the new jewelry or flowers or whatever. And it's not, in some cases, a "I'm really happy and can't resist sharing" impulse, but it's a "Look at me! I'm so great! I'm better than you because I have a MAN!" impulse. And I'm sorry, but anyone who does that - who flaunts their couple-ness as a way of trying to make themselves feel better, or to make themselves seem better than someone who is not part of a couple, well, they can just suck it. Because that's really a shabby thing to do to a person who may ALREADY be a little low because they're being reminded that they are ALONE on the couple day of all couple days.)

I don't know. It was easier, in some ways, in grade school, where you gave cards to your friends and mmmmmmaaaayyyybbbbbeee to the boy (in my case) you had a wee little crush on, and if you were incredibly lucky, you'd get a card from that boy. But that was the whole extent of it - there was far less agony, far less feeling bereft. Because even if Mark D. didn't send you a card, at least your friends did. So you felt like someone still loved you. And then you had your cup of red Hi-C punch and a cupcake with pink frosting, and you didn't have Math in the afternoon because of the Valentine's Day party.

It got harder in high school. They did a couple fund-raisers: a carnation sale, and then, a couple years later, a candygram sale. None of my friends or I ever got carnations. One year one of the girls who had, ahem, a "reputation" got a whole bunch of them. Which we laughed about, I'm ashamed to admit. But we sent candygrams to each other and put funny cryptic messages on them. (I actually still have a couple of those). And somehow that helped, having a couple friends in the same boat to sit back and laugh about it with.

But as an adult - either everyone around me is part of a couple, or the few other uncoupled types I know, they seem too mature to be bugged by it. (And that also makes me feel bad, I have to admit: why can't I just Woman Up and ignore the day? I say I will every year, but I never quite manage). And so there's no one like K. or T. or M. to sit at lunch with and snicker and be scandalized that D. got 15 carnations, and oh my gosh, I bet they're from different guys, and I wonder, are they guys she put out for or just ones who hope she'll put out for them?

Yeah, yeah, petty and terrible, I know. But I do know that D. grew up and got married and apparently has a nice life. So don't feel too bad for her.

This is just one of the times I kind of wish my old gang was still around me - that we could sit around and snark on all the stupid stuff that we deep down kind of hurt about. K. and T. are married - I know K. is happily married but I've not heard from T. in a while. M. I don't know, I've totally lost track of her.

But it would be nice, as I said, to have someone to sit with and snark about that stuff - about the ads showing women getting all excited because their husbands got them Lexuses (Lexi?) for the day, or the diamond ads like that one with the old couple walking hand in hand that secretly makes me cry (because dammit, I want that, I want someone to grow old with and still walk hand in hand with when I'm 75) but I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that it does make me cry...

Maybe you know what I mean.