Why can’t guys get it right just once?

Michelle writes:

Last year Mark, my boyfriend of three years, gave me a Valentine’s Day card that read: “See Dick, Jane and Spot. They got together to make you this card. Dick brought the markers. Jane brought the crayons.” When I tried to open the card, I discovered it was “glued” shut. I turned the card over only to find a drawing of an unsightly dog holding a jar of glue. The card continued, “Spot brought the glue. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

“Isn’t that funny?” Mark giggled.

“Funny?” I snarled. I began to shake.

To this day, he still chuckles whenever I bitterly mention the card. It wasn’t so much that it was a card that he could have given to his grandmother that upset me. It wasn’t even the fact that my card to him (spilling with lace, cherubs, kissing statues, “true passion” and “feverish bliss” that I’d carefully selected sometime in January) was filled with at least 250 words of my own syrupy heartfelt prose that sent me over the edge. It was more the fact that the card was a Valentine’s Day card. I could have handled the situation had it been a birthday card, for example. But the one goddamn day of the year when I expected some hint of romance, I got a dog holding glue.

It’s not Mark’s fault that I spent high school with my girlfriends sighing and cooing over a book called 1001 Ways to Be Romantic. It’s also not his fault that my favorite color is pink, my favorite food is chocolate, my favorite gifts are flowers and jewelry and that all of these items rally together to create the commercial atom bomb that we know as Valentine’s Day. Although he’s something of an innocent bystander, I don’t think Mark should be unaffected by the fallout.

Even before the concept of romance attached itself to Valentine’s Day in my mind, it was always my favorite holiday. Since I created my first heart-shaped valentine mailbox in kindergarten, the day has always seemed really, well … pretty. And that’s not to say I don’t see the consumer, ecological, patriarchal and Eurocentric consequences that a holiday like Valentine’s Day inflicts upon our culture.

I can also see through the falsity of a construct like romance. Most days I would rather have Mark clean the bathtub to prove his valiant love than to buy me jewelry (well, some days … OK, one day). My father has been romantic twice in 33 years of marriage to my mother, so I guess it’s not terribly important to a lasting union. As commercial and corrupt as it all may be, however, I don’t think it is a bad thing to have a holiday with love at its core.

On Valentine’s Day in 1997, I took a box of chocolates to my Uncle John. His wife of 59 years had recently died, and I wanted to make him feel less alone in the world. We had a long visit. Then, in a strange and clumsy moment, I stood by my Honda as he held his screen door open. His aged Nevada ranching hands were still clutching the candy, and he told me he loved me for the first and only time. I told him that I loved him too. Uncle John died six days later. I found the chocolates untouched while cleaning out his refrigerator. Without sounding too Chicken Soup for the Soul here, that’s why I like Valentine’s Day.

I know love and romance aren’t interchangeable concepts, but the essence of romance, even if it only involves picking out a card, is to do something special for someone you love.

Mark’s response:

I don’t hate Valentine’s Day. What I hate is the way businesses appeal to my loved ones in an attempt to drain my bank account.

Take this scenario: You’re innocently watching TV with your girlfriend sometime in January when a jewelry store commercial comes on, displaying a diamond-studded platinum heart pendant and reminding you to “show her how much you care this Valentine’s Day.” As you shake your head in disgust at such blatant commercialism, you see that your girlfriend is staring at you plaintively with big Bambi eyes. On the tip of her tongue is a remark about the available real estate around her neck.

OK, so girlfriends like jewelry, or at least mine does. But why on Valentine’s Day? There are any number of legends about the origin of the so-called holiday and the life and times of St. Valentine, all of which are about as conclusive as old photographs of the Loch Ness monster. None of them are in any way relevant to our culture. I’ll spare you the obscure history lesson.

Here’s the deal, kids: Valentine’s Day is about Hallmark selling you cards and See’s selling you chocolate. It’s not about love and romance. You can have that stuff any day of the year if it’s what you value, provided you’ve got a special someone.

My special someone happens to enjoy Valentine’s Day and all its trappings, so last year I decided to get her a card, even though I think greeting cards are one of the nastiest tricks ever played on consumers. We as a society have been convinced that if we want to say something nice, we need to shell out four dollars to some corporation so that one of its crack team of hacks can say it for us, only without any kind of personal touch. Not that cards aren’t sometimes beautiful, but is love really about being able to pick something off a shelf?

Personally, I don’t have the patience to pore through other people’s platitudes looking for something that suits me. If there’s something I want to say, I know how to put my mouth around the words. And when it’s something that ought to be preserved, I know how to put a pen to paper.

I’ve done just that, in fact. I’ve written Michelle love letters when I’ve had something special to say. Maybe I haven’t done it enough, and maybe not according to a strict schedule upheld by a media-driven tradition, but my girlfriend knows I love her. Bringing some untalented third party into it seems a little perverse to me. However, Michelle wanted a card, so I set out to buy one.

As it turned out, I did not select the most romantic card in the place, but I did find one that made me smile when I read it, so I bought it, thinking it might bring a smile to Michelle’s face, too. Not a lot of thought went into it, but it was more real than any canned second-hand sentiment I might have stumbled across. Michelle did not see it the same way. I felt bad that I had let her down, but I can’t compete with the stored-up imagery from a lifetime’s worth of diamond ads.

It’s too bad that people want to adhere to a set of traditions that has been perpetuated by a corporate profit motive. I am sorry that’s the way the world works, but I do not apologize for refusing to subscribe to it. I guess it makes me a cynic, but no television commercial is going to tell me how to love someone.