Valentine

I’ve only ever received one valentine card. It was from a girl named Claire in 1996. I think. The 90’s have (thankfully) kind of blurred together. I had harbored my typical brand of unspoken obsession for Claire and, I suppose, she must have felt a mutual sort of attraction. Enough to earn me my one and only card.

It’s particularly disheartening considering that I have been in relationships with women for several Valentine’s Days and, always, the day passed without being acknowledged. I guess, even when I’m sleeping with them, I just don’t get along with women.

So today will be my typical Valentine’s Day – work the entire day away at my retarded day job, go home and watch movies and eat a light dinner, dream about getting a card from Claire out of the blue, then sort of pass out in the easy chair hugging an inflatable dinosaur to my chest.

From there, my night will go on like every night: Woken by the shuddering, angry fridge. Woken by someone hitting the dumpster with their SUV while backing out of their parking space at 70 miles per hour. Woken up by the piece of shit 27 year old Toyota that’s always parked under my window and has a super-sensitive alarm system. It always goes off at 5am. One morning, I crawled to the window and saw that there were about seven car alarms going off in the parking lot, which is very much a sign of alien visitation.

This morning, at around 5:15am, I made myself a little promise. I’m going to start buying guns in preparation for the coming alien invasion, and so I can stalk through the parking lot every night shooting out tires. I also yearn to kick my neighbor’s doors down and shoot them while they sleep, but we’ll not talk about that because then people will think there’s something wrong with me.

I’m straying from Valentine’s Day thoughts. Today is supposed to be all Hallmarkey. Every single blog I’ve subscribed to is all Valentine’s this and that so, when I fired up Google reader this morning, I was assaulted by flowers and well-wishing. Even from the dark and dreary blogs, and the cynics, and the wicked and depraved. It’s actually quite disgusting and neurotic. I approve of Halloween, and I love New Years Eve, but every other holiday just seems like a dreadful waste of time. This isn’t even a holiday. It’s some hokey tradition like Mother’s Day. Except it is a bit longer in the tooth, I suppose. And, of course, it straddles a pagan festival. Which makes today even more of a waste – it’s a pseudo-religious holiday scheduled to take advantage of that pagan festival. Great! Can we get a day off work? Because that’s the only thing I respect. God usually ranks a paid holiday but, no, not this time. Instead we get President’s Day off. And that really is made up! The date that falls between the birthdays of two presidents is a big ass holiday? That’s like having a holiday for Almost Christmas. Nearly Thanksgiving!

The Valentine’s Day fervor is especially grating when you work a customer service job. Every day of the work week, I answer phones and talk to the most dysfunctional people on the planet. By nature of the job, I’m only talking to them if they have a problem. But our customers seem to be especially insane. They’re all pampered grad students and degreed professionals. Half of them are savants and the other half are sociopaths. At my old phone job, I talked to students travelling the world. They were idiots, and they sort of knew it. Here I talk to people with PhD’s, primarily, and they’re idiots and indignant about it. Not to mention racist and sexist. At least once a day, I get brutally cussed out. Those calls tend to open up like that. I answer, and they reply that I’m a fucking moron and they doubt if I can help them. One customer called my co-worker a nigger bitch, then called back, got me, and said, “Don’t transfer me to any niggers.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Those are the nice ones. Two or three times a year, I have to terminate calls because they get so abusive. I’ve collected emails and nasty phone calls and letters in the forums, but have recently locked them away in a spot where you need a high postcount because my co-workers are all a bunch of cunts who like to snuffle around in my business and report to my supervisors.

So here are these assholes I have to talk to all day and, today, each and every one is going to open up with: “Happy Valentine’s Day!” That’s the yearly tradition. A whole day dealing with folks who are like the wide-eyed, cheerful residents of Punxsutawney in Groundhog Day.

Why wish a stranger happy Valentine’s Day? Are they my valentine? Am I theirs? I don’t know who the fuck they are and I hope they die. That’s basic tribalism, by the way, so don’t get on my case about it. I’m merely embracing my anthropological roots. I don’t know you, and the only possible reason you could be in my life is because you’re going to steal my stuff or try to harm me.

It’s like when people wish me a happy Mother’s Day. Am I someone’s mom? Who does that? Is it just the excuse to be falsely cheerful? Or, if not falsely, then to exercise your psychosis by wishing strangers happiness and secretly getting sexually aroused because you’re so retarded and shallow it makes my teeth hurt? In that case, every day is a holiday. Tomorrow is Saint Siegfried of Sweden’s feast day. Happy St. Siegfried’s Day!

Me, I’m holding out for the 29^th. The Baha’i have some goofball holiday that they only celebrate on leap days. I have no idea what the holiday is, or what you’re supposed to do, and I don’t really care. But I will spend the 29^th telling everyone Happy Ayyam-i-Ha! Oh my god! Did you get me a card? You fucking assholes.