It’s the middle of February, the time of year when your
average American male reaches his annual low point. The Super Bowl is over and
Valentines Day is looming near and there is not much to look forward to. To
quote an old line from the TV show Hee Haw (and I almost never quote the TV
show Hee Haw) it’s a time of “gloom, despair and agony on me; deep dark
depression and excessive misery…”
I have never been a fan of Valentines Day. Even as a kid I
thought it was stupid that I had to give cards to girls in my class asking them
to “Be Mine” or “Be my Valentine”, at a time when my main concern about girls
was to avoid their cooties. It was a day filled with cute little red and pink
hearts, Cupids and those nasty little chalk tasting heart shaped candies with
words like “Love” written on them. For an elementary school boy it was beyond
gross, it was excessive misery!
As a young teenager it wasn’t much better because even if
you did have a crush on a girl and you gave her a Valentine card or gift you
risked rejection or, worse, ridicule if your friends found out. It’s a teenaged
boy’s worse nightmare to risk showing affection or even interest in a girl and
Valentines Day is a trap baiting you into exposing emotion to the cruelest
demographic on the planet … other teenagers.
It’s not until later when young men come to realize that
Valentine’s Day is a lose/lose situation for them. It’s billed as an
opportunity to show your interest in a potential girlfriend or affection for
your sweetheart but, in fact, it’s an invitation to losing your girlfriend or
losing the chance to have a girlfriend.
If you have a girlfriend, wife or significant other you take
a risk of hurting her feelings if you don’t make a big enough Valentine gesture.
At the same time if you go too big she’ll either run away thinking you’re a
stalker or become suspicious of what you did wrong that you’re compensating for
(which you probably have, but she doesn’t know that). If you try to evade the
whole business by not giving a Valentine at all you’re destined for some gloom,
despair and agony for sure! It’s a classic lose/lose scenario and there’s no
escaping.
What’s worse there’s no written guideline to tell you what
an appropriate Valentine gift is for any particular stage of a relationship.
Each woman gets to sit back and arbitrarily decide whether your gift is creepy
stalker material, proof of your romantic inadequacy or just plain unworthy.
Talk about trying to hit a moving target!!
Believe it or not there’s an even worse scenario that you’ll
never see coming; the dreaded accidental confession of eternal love. This is
the stuff of nightmares and the storyline of far too many episodes of Dateline.
It’s when you give a Valentine card or gift to a woman you have a casual
interest in and she goes full Fatal Attraction stalker on you. If you give a
friendly Valentine card to a casual acquaintance and she get’s it cover picture
tattooed on her lower back, be afraid … be very afraid!
For the record I’ve disappointed, scared or underwhelmed
every female have ever given a Valentines Day gift to and I’ve felt the annual
gloom, despair and agony. On behalf of men everywhere I’m tired of giving women
this kind of power over our lives! So I’m creating the man’s guide to
Valentines gifts and, if we all stick together we can render them powerless and
they’ll just be glad we remembered Valentines Day at all.
Follow these simple guidelines and we can collectively
escape the deep dark depression of mid-February.
- For girls you have
a casual interest in but she has evidence of a faded “Be Mine” tattoo, a nod and a wave from across the room is
adequate and safe.
- For women you
already know and you would like to take things to the next level, a card and some
flowers are perfect.
- For a hot woman you
think you might have a chance with, a European sports car is a suitable
Valentines gift.
- If you have a
girlfriend and you don’t want to piss her off or encourage her to shop for
wedding dresses, dinner and flowers is just enough to get by.
- If you’re engaged,
a cheap dinner and a small gift are good because you’ve already sprung for a
ring and you need to establish lowered expectations now.
- For guys married
less than 20 years, cook dinner for her and give her a glass of wine … after she
does the dishes.
- If you’ve been
married for more than 20 years lead with the wine because she’s probably
already pissed at you for something, then order her favorite pizza and pretend
to care about her favorite TV show, unless it’s Project Runway. Since she’s most
likely pissed at you anyway there is no need to put yourself through an episode
of Project Runway. Just pour her another glass of wine and save yourself.
So good luck fellas and remember to just follow these
guidelines and you can’t go wrong. Then again you’re taking advice from a guy
who has suffered deep dark depression and excessive misery every Valentines Day
in the Johnson Administration so good luck with that!
Happy Valentines Day ladies and remember that if that certain
someone disappoints you with a lousy gift this year, you can always reach me
at: https://twitter.com/ElGuapo_Speaks
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