Wednesday February 15, 2012

If you're reading this, you survived Valentine's Day. Which, let's face it, is an accomplishment for which you should reward yourself with some half-priced candy. (Dear stores that do not put candy on half-price sale after V-Day: You are hereby given a stern frowning.)

Valentine's Day is tough to survive. To start with, the mascot of the whole holiday is a hideous winged beast with dangerous weaponry. (Yes, I consider babies hideous beasts, which has endeared me to all my friends who are parents. I am also available for baby-sitting.) I think if I had to choose between facing a gryphon and a naked flying baby shooting arrows, I would be more afraid of the baby. Also, gryphons are much cuter.

What's more, Valentine's Day is very stressful for most people. Guy and gal couples are expected to support the "romantic industrial complex" by the man buying things (flowers, chocolate, jewelry, Brad Pitt, etc.) to express his love, and the woman ... well, perhaps it is best summed up by a florist's commercial that aired during the Super Bowl where a sexily dressing woman seductively says to the camera: "Guys, Valentine's Day is not that complicated: Give, and you shall receive."

And I'm pretty sure she wasn't implying the guy would get a teddy bear holding a heart. So a man and woman in a relationship do not have it easy on Valentine's Day. And yet, it's worse for everyone else. Single people are made to feel inadequate

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for not being in a romantic relationship. Gay people are sometimes made to feel inadequate even if they are in a romantic relationship. And of course, people who place more value on other loves in their life (family, close friendships, the Internet) are made to feel that those loves do not matter because they are not the Hallmark-approved Red-Blooded Real American Love (tm).

What's more, I've heard the complaint that Valentine's Day consists of people trying to make up for a year of neglect by showing love through material purchases one day a year. And I think I get the message -- with Valentine's Day now over, let's think of it like Christmas and figure out how to spread that message all year!

First off, we should have a big campaign to put up billboards saying, "YOU HAVE ONE TRUE SOULMATE YOU MUST FIND TO BE YOUR EVERYTHING AND COMPLETE YOUR LIFE." We convey this message a lot already, but not clearly enough. Some people are still under the illusion that we might find happiness with more than one of the world's seven billion people. Or that we shouldn't expect one person to fulfill our every need because we also have friends. Or that single people can lead complete and fulfilling lives, and even people looking for a relationship might prefer someone already complete.

This is crazy talk.

We're already doing a pretty good job of reminding people that only a traditional normative romantic relationship has value and that other relationships don't count. But our biggest failing is not keeping in mind the message of that florist commercial: Romance is men spending money, so women will do whatever they want. It's just a shame that this spirit of Valentine's Day is currently only legal in Nevada.

So I hope the rest of America will follow Nevada's lead in promoting the V-Day message. Meanwhile, if you need me, I'll be feeding half-priced candy to the gryphons.

Seth Brown is a local humor writer, the author of "From God To Verse," and hates Valentine's Day. His work appears weekly in the Transcript, and weakly on RisingPun.com.