Pinocchio Syndrome

Valentine's Day used to be the most terrifying day of the year for boys and girls aged 13-17 across the Hallmark world. The lack of mail, addressed to me, each year on this very date, used to bring me to moments of utter despair. Was there really not one person out there who secretly had a desire to make me feel better? Why didn't my Mother who saw year after year the total rejection imprinted on my teenage face, come to the rescue and anonymously send me a card enclosed with disguised hand writing?

I did however used to to buy myself several Valentine's day cards and spend hours writing sumptuous poems to myself and delectable one liners to show to my classmates as proof of how desirable a catch I was to the opposite sex. The next day hundreds of cards were perused and scrutinized in my grade at school and I hazard to guess that ninety per cent of them were fabricated, like mine, in some form. It is amazing at aged 15 how many Valentine's cards my friends and I received and how few girls all of us actually conversed with that weren't direct family members.

A silver jubilee of years later I no longer fret about Valentine's day. The hype associated with these " commercial days," ( Valentine's, Halloween, Mother's, Father's etc) is merely that. Why would I want to pay triple the price to send my wife a dozen roses? My wife doesn't eat chocolate and the birthday, anniversary and December holiday exchange of gifts seems to satisfy the desire to show our love to each other through the giving and receiving of practical presents.

I am not completely oblivious to Valentine's day. The hype surrounding this " retail sales holiday." makes it very difficult to avoid. Total strangers wish me a " happy Valentine's day," including the man handing out the free local newspapers on the street corner near my office.

It seems to me that Manhattan becomes enveloped with the sights, smells and tastes of Eros that permeate every vendor and restaurateur.

My wife and I do exchange cards. We choose the cards very carefully paying particular attention to the wording and adding meaningful notations of our own. We also have dinner together once the kids are asleep and I usually cook her one of her favorite dishes, having shopped for the raw ingredients on the way home from work. I will most likely open up a bottle of something nice to drink too but this year on a Monday night it may be limited to an expensive bottled pink lemonade sold at the grocery store.

I make it my business to walk past one of the many specialty chocolate stores during Valentine's day just to see the magnetic draw of the thousands of lovers who feel the need to ingratiate their better halves with sweet, succulent morsels of love cocoa. The lines outside these stores are quite incredible. The fabrication of cards may have disappeared from the annual routine of these modern day Adonis's but the lies and deception still permeate their expressions as they wait patiently fulfilling their obligation to wear love on their sleeves. If statistics in New York City are correct, thirty per cent of those in line are cheating on their partner, fifty per cent of those wont be with their spouse by the time a new decade begins, and eight out of ten purchasing chocolate can't bear to be in the same room with the recipient for the amount of time it takes them to unwrap the box. Happy Valentine’s Day!