I was up a few nights ago thinking about what excuse I will come up with this year when people ask me if I am celebrating Valentine’s Day. Call me jinxed, but somehow this day has brought me nothing but poor luck and one year, an awful but pretty expensive meal.
Cupid has shot me with all the wrong arrows, now they have not been many, but I wish they were few enough to forget. My first Valentine was a boy of six and I prefer not to count him among the lot because we had no idea what it is we were celebrating; we were two beady-eyed kids playing grown-up and sharing a snack of chocolate and juice on February 14, 1989.
If you’re wondering if I kissed that boy of six, no! I was too shy. Though I was brave enough to take him home and announce that we were going steady. “What does going steady mean?” my father asked and I shook my head; I had no clue and guess what, my ‘boyfriend’ did not know either. The good old days… ah how I miss them!
Puberty, a forehead that makes me feel uncomfortable (sometimes) and a few bad ones later I end up dreading Valentine’s Day. Thanks a million Jason (not his real name) for my now warped opinion of this day. I can still see him sitting on a stool in our woods class screaming at the top of his lungs how he was seeing me for the first time.
Do you know that Rod Stewart song (the name escapes me) but it beautifully narrates the story of a man looking at a woman and realizing that he loves her. This guy broke into this song during class a few days before Valentine’s that year and proudly announced that he was serenading me. Define embarrassment and come look it up in my past. Call me crazy for hating Valentine’s Day since I was 14, but I honestly believe I was jinxed since this incident.
I wish I could erase this memory that still haunts me every year and no matter how hard I try it just would not go away. I might have overreacted with Jason or was too young to know better, but things never improved.
I got this cool card one year that said, “You Rock My World!” with a heart and a guitar in the place of cupid’s arrow; very interesting year.
Other years I found myself going to fancy lunches and sitting at the table feeling empty. I remember glancing at the bill once and it said some ridiculous price like $15,000 and the meal actually sucked! I asked for mine take-away and later fed it to a dog on the road that rejected it after initially showing interest.
“It will get better with time,” a friend once said and I want so much to believe her. Last year it was pretty special, but what a difference a year could make.
I am likely to pass the day this year sitting in front of my computer doing some work which I have neglected for too long and in the evening relaxing at home with my family.
Every year around this time I would go back to my childhood and reminisce on the pleasant company of that boy of six who innocently shared a meal with me on what was probably the best Valentine’s Day I have had to date. (thescene@stabroeknews.com)
