Jovial

You may think, due to yesterday's post, and due to the fact that I have never had a boyfriend on any of the 22 Valentine's Days I have celebrated, that I don't like Valentine's Day.  You'd be wrong about that, I'm afraid.

I actually love Valentine's Day.  I may be destined to be a husbandless cat lady, but I do believe in romance and love.  I genuinely enjoy celebrating the Hallmark holiday that has become all about love.  In fact, I will be eating heart-shaped pizza today.  I think that's pretty awesome.

In order to balance out yesterday's somewhat angsty post, I offer you this somewhat for-fun post.

FOURTEEN ENNUMERATED THINGS

THAT ALL

SORT OF

HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH

ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

1.) There were, apparently, three saints named Valentine.  They were all martyred in various ways, at various times in history, in various places across the globe.  These three saints were later accidentally combined into one St. Valentine (about whom the auspicious they purported a huge, fictitious, Romeo-&-Juliet-forbidden-love-type story).  So even though we call it St. Valentine's Day, it should technically be called St. Valentines' Day.  The difference in apostrophe placement is a very big deal in my tiny grammatical world.

2.) The hearts we put on everything look nothing like the actual human heart.  When I did some research about the heart symbol, I was made aware that the heart symbol may have originated as a mimickery of either plants, or early forms of herbal birth control, or simply stylized sex symbols.  That gives new meaning to that typical emoticon: <3.

3.) Although Valentine's Day itself dates back to years in the triple digits, it wasn't until the late 18th century that people began to use it as a means of courtship.  Guess how the love thing got spread around?  Fancy greeting cards.  I think we can officially call this one a Hallmark holiday.

4.) I think it means something that the kissing bears are fitted with magnets that force them to kiss.  Shouldn't they have a choice?  It's sick!  Sick, I tell you!

5.) PinkFriend's birthday is on Valentine's Day.  I cannot think of a more appropriate day for PinkFriend to have been born.  I have double the reasons to celebrate February 14th!

6.) I have always had this secret dream of receiving tons and tons of multi-colored roses from a guy who loves me on Valentine's Day.  I guess it isn't secret anymore.

7.) Valentine's Day could also be viewed as a day celebrating chocolate, in all of its delectable beauty and wonder.

8.) Ladies, don't ever get married on Valentine's Day.  It makes it too easy for your man to remember when your anniversary is, while it simultaneously quadruples the pressure for him to come up with some kind of uber-romantic rendezvous year after year after year...

9.) If you do happen to be single on Valentine's Day, and you realize that you're noticing more and more couples, until it seems that everyone on the planet has a match except you, don't be distressed.  Tunnel-Vision Fairies love Valentine's Day.  These fairies fly in patterns to create an attention vortex, drawing your gaze and making it impossible for you to miss the couple they used as a focal point.  They take every opportunity to make you miserable.  They follow single people around all day.  The best way to get rid of them is to pretend like it doesn't bother you.  If you concentrate hard enough on convincing the fairies of this, you might even convince yourself.

10.) Although St. Valentine's Day tries to be perfect, he definitely has his shortcomings.  A little known fact about St. Valentine's Day is that he is actually extremely jealous of his brother St. Patrick's Day.  St. Valentine's Day wishes he could be more laid back and fun, like good ol' St. Patty's Day, even though his brother is way undercelebrated.  Whenever it seems that Valentine's Day isn't going as well as you'd like, try to cut him some slack.  It might just be an off-year for the poor guy.

11.) One should only give out Valentine's Day cards if there is candy to back it up.  A card sans candy is as meaningless as The Pope sans his tall hat.

*By the way, if PinkFriend were Pope, I imagine it would look something like this:*

12.) Fellas, Valentine's Day might be a good day to make a move on that chick you've had your eye on.  My favorite pick-up line of all time is the classic, "Let's count shoulders" line, where he ends up with his arm around you.  The "Are your feet tired?" and "Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?" types of lines are acceptable, though not ideal.  Try to be more creative.  But above all, don't ever use anything written by George Lucas (I shudder to think of the sand conversation in Attack of the Clones).

13.) No matter how much you want them to, your pets do not celebrate Valentine's Day.  Please don't dress them up like they do.  You will only confuse and annoy them, provoking their uprising all the sooner.  Let's avoid that, shall we?  (Also, if you don't dress them up like that, I don't have to coo and aww over the stupid pictures you took and insisted on showing me).

14.) As the final item on this list, I shall reveal to you that I have made it my mission in life to find Cupid some pants.