Happy Valentine's Day

Welcome to Valentine’s Day: the most pointless holiday of the year.

This may seem like the rant of a bitter singleton, but I promise that it isn’t. I occasionally feel like a bitter singleton, but this comes from a calculated place, a look at what we really celebrate on this day.

You can be one of two people on Valentine’s Day. If you are part of a couple, then this day is for showing how much you love your other half. You can wine and dine them, buy flowers and light romantic candles.

But do you really need a day to show your partner how much you care? Don’t wait until some non-day in February to say ‘I love you’. Say it now. Or shout it if they are in another room. Or ring them. Just say it.

I find it entirely pointless to wait until some kind of higher power tells us when to be romantic. Take your lover out to dinner whenever you please. Spend some time together: talk and do something mundane. Enjoy it because the love of your life is there with you.

Buy your girl flowers because the blue reminded you of her beautiful eyes. Buy your man tickets to the football, because a smile on his face is worth more than a new pair of shoes. Whatever you choose, you don’t need this day to tell you when to do it.

The other people are those who are single. For you, Valentine’s day does nothing but show you what you are missing out on. You can see people kiss in the street or see all your friends receive gifts, mostly things shaped like hearts. It seems that on this day, heart-shaped objects are a whole bunch better than normal shaped ones.

Okay, sure. You could make yourself a card with red paper and glitter. You could write ‘Be My Valentine’ in it and then sign it with a ‘?’. To make it more cryptic, you could write ‘If you think you know who I am, come see me at lunch and ask “What are the purple chips like?”’. Then you could cut that message out of newspapers, to make it even harder to trace.

But who are you? Deep Throat? (By ‘Deep Throat’, I mean the informant and not the porn movie of the same name. However, I’m very sure that the latter has a lot of influence on this day)

What is the best you can expect from this method? Even if the girl does like you, even if she does come to you at lunch and ask you about purple chips, the whole relationship is going to start off on the wrong foot. You are being a wimp!

The whole idea of the anonymous card is to save yourself potential embarrassment. If the girl doesn’t think about you in that way, she’ll never ask you about chips and you’ll eventually get over your crush and move on.

But all people are doing is hiding behind red hearts cut out from card. If a girl likes you, you tend to have some idea. It’ll be in the way she talks to you, the way she dances with you, the messages she leaves on your Facebook, the lingering glances, the drunken flirting.

I’m not going to stand here and say girls make sense because they don’t. But if you get an idea that they like you, chances are it is worth a shot. Ask.

It is that simple. Ask. One word. Don’t hide your name in a card. Stand in front of her and say “You fancy getting a drink? Or a bagel?”. Worse case, she says no and you’ve saved money on a card. You feel bad for about a day, before you justify it in your head and move on.

But a whole bunch of the time, she’ll say yes. Not always because she likes you, but because she wants to give you a chance. You took the courage to ask. One date couldn’t hurt.

You don’t need a special day to do this either. You like a girl in June, you ask her then. You like a girl called June in December, you invite her round for mince pies.

Whichever way you look at it, Valentine’s day is overpriced and overrated. Still wish I’d get a card though.

:)

DISCLAIMER: Whilst the advice above is good and sound in principle, I don’t always live by that code. Sure, I’d like to be that guy that can walk up to girls, wink and take them out on dates. But girls scare me. With their long hair and their girl bits, I tend to feel very intimidated.

But hey, maybe I’ll try my own advice out. All I got to do is ask, right?

http://muszka.deviantart.com/art/let-me-kiss-it-better-57769411