A Valentine for V-Day

No, this is not going to one of those rants about how the Valentine's Day decorations go up at the CVS Pharmacy before the New Year's toasts have even been made, the Whitman's Samplers nudging aside the chocolate Santas before most people have even had a chance to throw away the Christmas wrapping paper.

But the annual celebration of hearts and flowers is just about upon us again, and as a B-list blogger (okay, B minus) I would be truly remiss if I were to let the romantic holiday pass without shooting off my mouth at least a little bit about it.

For one thing, would someone tell me when in the heck this thing became "V-Day" rather than "Valentine's Day?" Don't tell me some officious doofus decided that saying "Valentine" might offend some professional victimhood group. And by the way, so what if it does? I'm sick to death of professional victimhood groups. Let 'em eat chocolate Santas. "V-day" is like calling Thanksgiving "Turkey Day." In fact it's worse. Everyone in the USA associates Thanksgiving with turkey, but what the hell does "V" have to do with anything? It sounds like we're celebrating a novel by Thomas Pynchon, or the end of World War II, or worse yet, that idiotic movie that came out two or three years ago in which some guy wearing a getup that made him look like a cross between Zorro and Batman's Joker ran around blowing up things.

Okay, now that I have that off my plate, I do have one rather sage, if I do say so myself, sentiment to offer in this season, which comes too quickly on the heels of the one we just finished cleaning up the mess from.

Actually, before I get to that, I have one thing I want to say to all you women out there: appreciate how tough this is for us guys. No, no, it's not what you're thinking. It's not that we have trouble telling you we love you. What we have a hard time doing is coming up with original ways to express it on a day that's set aside especially for that. Ways that won't have all of you rolling your eyeballs and saying, "Not another bottle of Chanel No. 5! You give me that every year! Can we at least make it Chanel No. 6 for a change?"

At Christmas time, we don't have any such problems. We're bombarded from all directions with gift ideas from merchants trying to sell everything from lingerie to snowmobiles. Department stores even have special booths set up where you can go and seek gift suggestions. Come Valentine's Day, we're on our own. Candy, roses, perfume, a dinner out, a bracelet or maybe a new watch ... Okay, I'm out of ideas. Most of us are at that point. Valentine's Day is tough. I don't think my wife Valerie wants a snowmobile, but I can't think of a blessed thing to give her for Valentine's Day that I haven't given her before. I do have a little surprise planned, don't worry about that. But I still have to come up with a gift. Suggestions, anyone? And DON'T say, "Cook her a meal." I do nearly all the cooking at our house already.

Okay, here's my pearl of wisdom for Valentine's Day this year. And it is a pearl of wisdom, if you define such things as insights that result from great pain and difficulty, truths that emerge from the fog of day-to-day life only after one has gained a view sufficiently panoramic to distinguish the mountains from the hills.

It's simply this: I don't know how happy or unhappy you are in this joyous month of February. Some people find February profoundly depressing. But consider: if the biggest problem you have right now is one related to your love life, then I'd say you actually have it pretty good. This is one of the hardest lessons life has ever taught me, and I mean to share it. If you just got dumped, or you have no date for the big day, and that's all that's bothering you, don't let it. Much, anyway. I know precisely how you feel. I've been dumped. Who hasn't? In fact I'll get brutally honest here and tell you that I've been dumped plenty of times. In fact I'll be even more brutally honest and tell you that more women have dumped me than I've dumped them.

Let's see you beat that on the humble meter.

But consider once again. If a broken heart or a lonely heart is your biggest problem of the moment, think about all the things that probably aren't happening to you. You're not being investigated by the IRS. Your doctor didn't just tell you that there's a suspicious dark spot on your X-ray. You're not five and a half months unemployed, with no prospects, and standing next to the mailbox holding your final unemployment check. (There's a place I've been.) You aren't mourning the death of a loved one. (One year I got dumped by a girl named Diane, and then my mother died. Believe me, of the two experiences, losing my mother was by far the worse.) You aren't sleeping on a steam grate somewhere, using newspapers for blankets.

You get my point. Near the end of Woody Allen's Play It Again Sam, the ghost of Humphrey Bogart, who has been doling out romantic advice to Woody Allen's schlemiel character throughout the picture, finally puts things in perspective: "The world is full of dames," he says, "but there are more important things than dames."

If you have a sweetie, do something for them on the 14th. If you don't, go do something for somebody else. Or for yourself, if it comes to that. Once, upon being told by my pal Charlie, who lived alone in New York, that he had not been invited anywhere for Thanksgiving, I asked what he would do with the day.

I've never forgotten his reply. It was downright inspiring.

"Oh, I'll do something that makes my soul feel good," he said.

Words to live by. To love by, too.