Let Me Ask a Question...

Does this day really mean anything to you?

I remember, well, barely, growing up kind of dreading this day. It's not that the brown paper bag taped to my old wooden school desk was completely empty at days end... the brown paper bag that we were told to bring in; had started the day off decorating with red construction paper hearts, glue and sparkles... It's not that my bag was empty, it's more that my bag was full of half baked forced truths, and for the most part meaningless bon mons from my friends from which I always wanted more. OK, we were only 7 or 8, but...

I dreaded the day that your parents and teachers forced you to punch out 30 some odd perforated cartoon heart decorated Valentines day cards. Writes some drivel that only added to the drivel pre-printed, folded sealed and stuffed into each of the other decorated paper bags on the front of each of the other desks in your grades one, two, three, four and five classrooms desk...

Bobby said this, Janie said that, Susan never said what I wanted to hear... I mean c'mon, Susan, my best pal, my GIRLfriend, the cutie beauty I was going to marry when I was 17, I mean, all grown up. Nope, all I ever got from Susan was a pre-perforated, punched out card, just another piece of cheap cardboard tossed into a paper bag...

About ten years ago. I brought my wife to a specially advertised couples dinner at my local pub. The food there was actually quite good, and well hey, a prix fix load of grub, a bottle of wine and a couple of beers might just be "what the doctor" had ordered up as a cure to a relationship floundering on boredom... We had a nice dinner, and a nice chat, when we got home later that night she admitted to me that for the last 3, 4 months she had been having an "affair", and although the "affair" was not cause for separation, the fact that she could even have an "affair" disturbed her to the point that she realized enough was enough and that it was time to end... this.

Fucking stupid bitch! As much as she was the love of my life, my, so called soul mate, one of the very few persons that I think I was absolutely connected to... I will always hate her for coming to that conclusion. Coming to that conclusion on a day I had gone way beyond buying her "stake knives" or tickets to the "ball game". On a night that I had actually thought about putting a little extra something into that red-construction-paper-heart decorated bag of hers.

Does this day mean anything, well I guess maybe it does. While half a bunch of nimrods are walking about dressed in pink shirts and skimpy underwear... while the asshole marketers [myself included], are trying to suck a few extra bucks out of heart strung morons whose greatest love adventure was picked out of a plastic bag they found buried at the bottom of a Captain Crunch cereal box... Today, this day, for me... means the absolute END of love.

And I think that that is absolutely fucking perfect.