Giving Teddy And Shop Vac May Not Fly
February. The month so bleak it had to be made shorter just so people could get through it. A time when all the colors of the landscape meld into one monotonous monochrome of earth, sky and mood.
The unofficial National SAD month. Light deprivation, staved off by holiday distractions, sets in like the gout. How else to explain Valentine’s Day? Send in the clowns and dress them in red teddies.
In an effort to lend a festive touch to this misanthropic month, some crazed people, probably with stock in greeting card companies, put their heads together and came up with Valentine’s Day.
Less than a bona fide holiday, but more than a commemorative stamp, Valentine’s Day is almost as emotionally charged an event as New Year’s Eve. To really enjoy it, we’re told, we need a date. Unrealistic expectations don’t hurt either.
These faulty expectations lead women to believe that men will actually enjoy wearing heart-festooned boxers while men think a size 5 thong will be just the ticket for an evening of romance. In the white-whaled corpulent aftermath of the food holidays, this kind of thinking is clearly deranged. But in matters of the February heart, and its more southerly regions, what do brains have to do with it?
Well, actually, quite a lot. The February brain is light-starved and, therefore, mildly nuts. In its pursuit of light, it creates a holiday that is as bright as a bandbox and whose sweetest reward is chocolate, commonly known to females as edible sunlight.
Tossing back a couple of pounds of See’s nuts and chews probably won’t persuade us to put on the thong. But it may grant our partners a temporary stay of execution. That’s because February is also the unofficial “I’ve got cabin fever and a kitchen knife” month.
Yep. Boxed in with Santa’s VISA bill and a winter sky whose pasty ceiling is roughly 2 inches higher than the living room, partners may begin to find each other’s company a wee bit vexing. Enter Valentine’s Day: the perfect opportunity to give just the wrong gift at just the wrong time.
“He doesn’t love me,” a woman wails, kicking the new shop vac her husband has thoughtfully chosen for her. A man gives his vegetarian girlfriend a weekend getaway to a hunting lodge. “She’ll love the scenery,” he reasons. He brings along her gift to him, a juicer machine and homemade carrot cookies. “It could have been worse,” he thinks, meaning roughly anything involving tofu.
These folks have fallen under the old spell of giving what they most want to receive. Not a bad idea if their beloved is willing to give up the gift. Better still if their sweetheart has the same shopping motives. An even swap ensues, both parties getting just what they have always wanted. In a perfect world. But not this one and not in February.
In February, on Valentine’s Day, a man buys a woman a shop vac and the woman buys the man a workbench. She is 0 for 2. And so is he.
To make this a win/win situation, the man has to now come up with two presents. And not just any kind of presents.
Great stuff, romantic stuff, penance kinds of stuff.
The fallback position on this is flowers, candy and some foreign breed of lingerie that the woman might foolishly misconstrue as just another gift for the man.
Meanwhile, the woman, who already has spent way more time than a sane person is allowed shopping for that just-right workbench, is waiting for her reward. Hint: Isotoners aren’t going to cut it.
Of course, she herself might be the gift-giver from hell, bestowing upon him natty cardigans to wear by the fire while reading excerpts aloud from Love’s Bursting Bodice.
On the other hand, if he likes that sort of thing, she may have just won his Fabio heart forever.
Valentine’s Day. Slouching through bleak winter we run headfirst into this Crayola red holiday. Celebrate it if you must, but beware: it’s a February kind of thing.
xxxx
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Kathleen Corkery Spencer The Spokesman-Review