Shut up and play ball

So today is Valentine's Day, or as I like to refer to it, The Day Single People Sit Around Bars Staring At Each Other And Wondering What The Fatal Flaw Is.  It's almost like walking around a prison yard.

"What are you in for?"
"I get blackout drunk and start throwing things. You?"
"Insecure narcissist, rare combination, fatal to personal lives."

Make no mistake, if you're sitting someplace alone tonight, then you're doing life wrong.

The problem is, there are a whole host of other things that also indicate you're doing it wrong, but ironically these are the very things you need to do to ensure you're not alone on V-Day.  Going to a church instead of watching football, sitting through any show featuring singing, dancing or the word "housewives" and being spoken to as if you were a small, slow child are a few that can make solitude the preferable choice.  Matter of fact, depending on who you're dealing with, a swift kick in the nuts might be the preferable choice.

Not that any of these things are a constant part of a relationship, but odds are you will have to them, or things like them, on a regular basis should you hope to maintain one.  The great myth of the world is that men are somehow running things; spend a day with any couple and that notion becomes laughable.  Not that this is a bad thing, often times unsupervised men are a fairly self-destructive bunch.  Sure we've got some nice things on our resume, killing mammoths, building stuff, curing disease (not to mention all the mice and spider issues solved over the years), but generally seem to need that female GPS to keep things pointed in the right direction.

Take the Panama Canal, for example.  If left to their own devices, all the guys contracted to build it would've got down to Panama, started effing off, enjoying the warm weather, drinking, and nothing would've been accomplished.  Only the thought of their wife's reaction to them returning home after 6 months with no paycheck kept them on task, if not for that, no Canal.  You can see it on a small scale every day, I'd wager that 90% of the intelligent decisions men make are centered around making or keeping a woman happy.  The other 10% are based on the desire to afford a faster car or larger television.

Laugh if you want, but I'd bet anything the guy who ends up curing cancer is finally kicking it in the ass to finish medical school this semester because he needs to buy a wedding ring, or risk the woman he lives with walking.  That Evolution of Man painting should have a woman standing on the right side with her arms crossed, tapping her foot.  Again, I don't bring up this point to cause offense, paint women as shrewish, any of that.  Only to highlight an evolution is my own way of thinking, which is to say, the stuff I used to mock guys for doing doesn't sound so intolerable any more.  At least not when you consider the alternative.

Valentine's Day is a perfect example of the type of thing I used to rail against.  While you have to tip your cap to the savvy businesspeople who've marketed the concept, it is, by and large, a scam.  Prescribing a certain date on which tokens of affection are required to be exchanged is the perfect way to ensure you could jack the price up at exactly the right moment.  If Hallmark and Russel Stover throwing huge marketing budgets behind a hyped up "holiday" make it required, then Guiness and Jameson should do the same for St. Paddy's.  Unfortunately I don't think Car Bombs are ever going to be afforded the same mandatory status as roses (but I can dream!).

Sure, you can argue that it's a nice show of appreciation for your significant other, but isn't that what an anniversary is supposed to be for?  If you're an inconsiderate f*ck the majority of the year, do flowers and a nice dinner on a Tuesday in February tilt the scales?

In truth, this day means little in the big picture, but the options have been laid out quite clearly: Shut up and play ball, or protest and perish.  In the past, I've taken a stand on principle and gone the second route; I probably don't have to explain just how poorly this has served me.

Now it's time for fresh tactics.  All that I ask is when you see me at a Farmer's Market some fall Sunday, holding a purse, with that glazed/stifled irritation expression that most men perfected much earlier in life, take it easy.  Just smirk and nod, we'll both know I'm a fraud, be content in that knowledge.

But not the Housewive show, some things are too far beyond the pale, if forced to watch that, it's the black pill and don't look back.