Valentine’s Day is this coming Saturday.
In our culture and society, it is the annual day for the celebration of all that mushy, romantic, love stuff.
If I may, please just let me be excused and just wake me when it is all over with.
Bah! And humbug! Is all I have to say about it.
Perhaps I would feel better about it if a certain aspect of my life were different, but you know the story about that. As I have lamented many times before, I am hopelessly single.
I don’t know what the story is about that.
The last few ended like this: “I can’t be married to no preacher.” (I had only asked her to go out and get a cup of coffee with me after the football game.)
“You've tried really hard, but there is no spark” and “We can be friends, but nothing more.” (This happened on my birthday. I had to drive all the way home from Statesboro, wounded, in a driving rain storm.)
“We can be friends, but that’s all it is.” (I have friends already.)
I mean, I think I am a nice enough guy. I don’t engage in all those unredeeming vices like alcohol and drugs and such. I never have found what’s so great about not knowing what you’ve done, where you’ve been or who you’ve been with.
One of my cousins, all of about 10 years old, asked me several years back why I wasn’t married.
“Good question,” I said. “Being married is hard.”
“Oh, it is not!” he said, with a non-chalant wave of his hands. “All you have to do...”
I was all ears and listening intently. I took out my reporter’s notebook to write it all down.
My pint-sized love counselor pronounced that all I needed were these simple items.
“First, you need a pair of sun shades. Then, you buy yourself a Coke. And, don’t forget to put some magnets in your pockets.”
The first two, he explained, make you look cool. The last, well, you just can’t beat science.
“That’s the secret formula?,” I asked, repeating it back to him.
“Yep,” he declared, beaming. “It worked for my Daddy. He found my Mama!”
It was, however, an epic fail for me.
What do you mean? Yes, I tried it. I have a hard enough time seeing with my bifocals, much less having everything around me now darkened with sunshades. Coke gave me carbon gas and made me burp. The magnets: well, lets just say I got stuck to everything metal that I came in contact with.
It was worth a shot. But, I guess, there's no choice, but to just grin and bear it. I might just have to be courageous and face Valentine’s Day alone.
Maybe, just maybe, though, I’ll give it one more try.
I’ll wear shades. And, drink a Coke. And, I might slip even more magnets in my pockets.
• Jason Deal is News Editor for The Blackshear Times. Reach him at jdeal@blacksheartimes. news.
