There was a Valentine’s Day tradition started about five years ago where the single and lovelorn amongst my university friends would get together on the 14th and play road hockey. It was fun. It started out as some pick-up with three of us and some kids who lived on Sudeep’s street, but one year it was a full-on tourney in the parking lot with subs and everything (okay, not everyone was single or lovelorn, but the more the merrier and a lot of us knew why we were there). We only actually did this for two or three years… after university, getting together to play road hockey wasn’t really practical and another consideration was that there were fewer and fewer of us who qualified for the event. This year, we may get as far as me bouncing a tennis ball on my stick. Certainly makes getting things organized a lot easier, anyway.

Somewhere between point A and point B, a whole mess of people got married or engaged or otherwise in some sort of long-term arrangement with someone lacking a Y-chromosone. Which is cool, really. I’m not the sort of person who begrudges others happiness because misery loves company or whatever. I guess I’m just a little envious. Or a lot, depending on the measuring stick you’re using.

Valentine’s Day seems to split people into two camps – those who embrace it, in all its crass commercialism and manufactured sentimentality, and those who reject it for those very reasons. The latter camp absolutely have a point. Why the hell should someone feel obliged to express their feelings for a significant other in some materialistic manner just because the greeting card industry needs some revenue stream in February? Well you’ll either care because you want to, or not care. Do people get all glum on Secretary’s Day if they don’t have a personal assistant? Yeah, I recognize that philosophy is a little at odds with my posting this particular entry on this particular day, but whatever. I don’t hate Valentine’s Day. It means nothing to me, it’s just another day like every other day, but I do wish that didn’t always have to be the case.

np – The Magnetic Fields / 69 Love Songs, Volume 1

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