i smell Sex and Candy

- Marcy Playground

In my own parallel universe, I’m Bill Murray in my version of Groundhog Day (the movie), but instead I’m reliving Valentine’s Day over and over again. Every year Al and I try to get it right, but it just doesn’t happen, so we don’t even bother trying anymore. In fact, it was about three years ago that we decided to boycott "traditionally commercial" Valentine’s Day after many years of useless disappointment.

Remember when we were kids, we’d sit around a knee high table in kindergarten, cutting out craftpaper hearts, pasting stickers on them and decorating with, I love you Mom! Those were the good old days. Making Valentines for your family was fun and creative....Then, later on, we grew into our teenagehood, where we pined for a Valentine of our very own, someone who would buy us chocolate and kiss us awkwardly or passionately (depending on our level of experience). Since reaching adulthood, I have to fess up that Valentine’s Day has pretty much bombed in my book, and not for lack of trying either...

Where can I start, My first year with Pacino, he completely forgot about Valentine’s Day and ditched me to practice for a pool tournament. I was livid that year. It was my first Valentine’s Day in a relationship and expectations ran high. But then again, being a metal-head tomboy and never mentioning those expectations to my equally metal-head boyfriend (who assumed I had a disdain for all things girly, and you can’t get any more girly than V-Day) was pretty much a given, and hence began our hate-affair with Valentine’s Day. There was that one year when Pacino’s Dad ended up being rushed to the hospital for emergency knee surgery, or the year that I had 3 midterms on Feb 15th. What about the year that Al had the chicken pox, or the one when we both had a gastro/flu thing happening. I guess puking in unison could be considered more romantic than puking solo, but I digress...Oh, and my favorite was the year we decided to go to one of our favorite haunts, a popular Schechuan restaurant for a nice V- Day meal. Even with reservations, we waited an hour and a half to be seated, another hour before our order was taken, and yet another hour before we got our appetizers...Needless to say, by the time our Wonton soup showed up, we were cranky, starving and morose to the point that we swore never EVER to officially celebrate Valentine’s Day again. Cupids be damned.

Actually, the last 2 years (since vowing to not celebrate) were our best V-days ever....The first year we were married, we decided to make our own feast (no mores restos), so we surfed FoodTv.ca, picked out some recipes, then slaved over a fantastic peppered roast which we devoured with a great bottle of wine, which got us giddy and giggly and really allegro. And last year, we picked up some takeout, rented a couple of movies and cuddled up on the couch for some quality alone time....Which proves my point that all the flowers and cards and chocolates and lingerie in the world does not make for a romantic evening. In fact, since boycotting Valentine’s day and all its acoutrements, in our pursuit to totally avoid those superficial displays of affection which greeting card companies thrive on, we’ve actually managed to remove that performance stress associated with it and as a result, we’ve ended up actually spending romantic, idyllic evenings together.

I think we’ve started a revolutionary new movement but we’ll have to keep it underground for a while cause Hallmark would probably send a couple of fat Italian cherubs wearing sunglasses and trenchcoats, driving a red Mercedes after me. Taking a cue from Alice in Wonderland, Happy Un-Valentine’s Day everybody.