What's Love Got to Do with It?

Now, don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't like to feel loved and all that—it's just that this holiday seems to have no meaning other than getting people to spend money, getting plenty of forgetful guys in trouble with their ladies, and making the lonely feel even lonelier. I suppose that, once upon a time, there was cultural significance for this holiday, such as boys dipping slices of goat hide into blood and slapping women and fields with them, all for the sake of fertility. But these days? No bloody goat hide for us, merely a society that equates love with how much junk your honey buys you.

And I don't need to buy some random garbage for my honey to let him know that I love him. Nor do I need him to buy me some crappy singing toy from Hallmark or a stuffed red teddy bear*.

So we've banned Valentine's Day in our house this year.

(Except for the suckers, that is.)

And on that note—that Valentine's is yet another over-marketed holiday that I get annoyed with every time I have to go to the store and see all the TRASH people are trying to sell me—I would like to share with you a poem I wrote for a poetry class in college**. The assignment was to write a Valentine's Day poem. In typical wynne-fashion, the first thing that came to mind wasn't sweet or syrupy. It was perverse and entertained me highly. I snickered to myself, and wrote.

Next time class was in session, the professor asked us to read our love poems to the class. (She was really big on that sort of thing.)

So people did. There were lots of hearts and rainbows and mush, and some people may even have written about their mothers. Eventually my turn came.

Here it is:

Valentine's Day Poem

Someday my prince will come
Someday I'll slam an axe into his
neck and mount his head
above my bedroom door.

If not there, perhaps
in my wallet, folded and pressed
very small, the size of a condom,
Where I can look any time

I need to see him in my
debt, or as one of my assets.
Really, any place dark will do
Where my dream can't slip away again:

In the long dark I will store
him, where he won't turn away when I
swear my devotion or offer
him my face to kiss.

At the time I read this, there may have been a classmate or two that were bugging me for a date†. But for some reason, after I read this, neither of them bothered me again. I wonder why††?

*Bears are forbidden. Chocolate, of course, will always be welcome, but hopefully I won't be limited to receiving it on just ONE DAY A YEAR.
**BYU-Idaho, known as "Ricks" in my day.
† This was the pre-Jeff era.
†† Some people just can't take a joke.