Declawing Valentine's Day

I really want to be one of the people who like Valentine's Day. Ostensibly it's a nice holiday about loving the people in your life. And I can definitely get behind flowers and chocolate. But something about the insane pressure and expectations that get put on the holiday really bugs me.

My now husband also feels that the holiday isn't all it's cracked up to be. So once upon a time, when we had been dating not quite a year, we were coming up on Our First Valentine's Day. We compared our ambivalent feelings about the day and came up with this solution: we were going to get each other the most stupid and disgusting holiday stuffed animals we could find.

I combed the mall in the town where I was in grad school and he went to Wal-mart. I got him a monkey. It's pink and pink. It's called Trembles. It vibrates and makes a loud screaming monkey noise and it cracks me up. He got me a snake. It's red and pink with a goofy smile and a heart pattern down its curly length. It cracks me up too. We exchanged them 8 years ago and have not come up with an equivalently awesome observance since. So we don't do Valentine's Day.

I don't think it's misanthropic for us to opt out of the holiday. We don't really, I buy chocolate and (my favorite) SweetTarts Hearts. And I do wish people would have a happy and low-stress day tomorrow in a treat-your-friends and treat-yourself kind of way.



And Trembles and the Love Snake wish that for you too.