February 6, 2011

Not Another Valentine’s Day Column

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Ohhhh, it hurts. The sunlight creeping through my window feels like a medieval torture device, I think my liver is about to explode, and I’m still not 100 percent sure why my clothes from last night are folded in a neat little pile in my kitchen sink. I am so not a freshman any more.But not to worry, gentle reader, because I’m armed with a triple-bagged trash can and a plethora of greasy food to help me fight through the queasies and bring you the good news: I am not going to write an angry Valentine’s Day column. You see, I’ve hit the big 2-0. A blip in the cosmic scale of things, but a milestone considering I can now use the word ‘decade’ in the plural to describe my age.As a person who has successfully survived one score, I am infinitely wiser and more mature than roughly half of the Cornell population, including those few stragglers who got dealt the short stick of the road through life (see: late summer birthdays).  Because of my blossoming maturity, I have the decency not to rant about how much I hate the Hallmark holiday that we all have come to know and love (or know and resent, depending on your Facebook relationship status). But if I were to write such a column, I would probably start with how I will more likely than not spend V-Day downing half-priced oysters with my equally-single friends at Maxie’s. Though if that were the case, I certainly wouldn’t tell you about how my famished friends and I would share vitriolic diatribes on past relationships as our collective food babies grew increasingly larger with every downed mollusk. Because that would be in poor taste. I’d also probably refrain from lamenting about my post-raw-bar food coma spent watching He’s Just Not That Into You and other celeb-ridden chick flicks with a light beer balanced effortlessly on my chest. Because that was so something I would do when I was still a teenager. But maybe if I were writing a V-Day column, my writing would take a turn mid-way. I’d make a witty transition that found me on the open road, headed to Montreal for the weekend, because Canada is the nearest country sane enough to realize that letting me legally have a beer in a bar will not tear apart the very fabric of their society. I’d probably tell you how I planned to chicly chat up a scruffy Frenchman, using my “je ne sais quoi” and my 300-level French expertise to entice him to be my Valentine.No, I probably wouldn’t tell you that … because I would lose every member of my audience that felt slightly less lonely at the thought of someone else spending a Valentine’s Day as lamely as they were. That, my friends, is not good column-advertising.So, as I was nearing the end of my column, I’d change my tone a little bit. I’d tell my readers that I was going to embrace my one wrinkle, my increased desire to chat about the weather, and my pesky back aches to treat Valentine’s day like a real adult — gracefully and as best as I can. I’d probably end with a little quip on how, beneath all the pink and red, the chocolate and roses, V-Day is all about telling the people you love most how much you love them. And though in my case there’s no pot of sex at the end of the rainbow, I think I can handle a selfless act every once in a while. But this year, I’m not going to write a V-Day column. I’m much too mature for th … oh, crap.

Original Author: Cristina Stiller