The human mind is allegedly the most complex organ in the human body, perhaps to some, but I use mine all the time. Its mystique is rivaled only by a slinky that got tangled up and that thing where someone makes it look like they’re pulling their thumb off their hand with their other hand but really it’s just tucked into their fist. No one really knows themself until they’re alone. Sitting with your thoughts exposes you to just who you really are. That’s gross, and so we spend our entire lives trying to find someone else to distract us, and in return we distract them from their own silly brain. This practice is called “Love” and it’s the spirit of Valentine’s Day. Saint Valentine, the holiday’s name sake, officiated the marriages of Roman soldiers and their wives against the order of Emperor Claudius II, for this he was put to death in a public square. That’s a nice story but it’s very drab and frankly I prefer the chocolates and teddy bears, it was a good change in marketing.
Valentine’s Day is a big deal if you watch too much television, so from ages 11 to 17 I felt like a real jerk because I was alone on Valentine’s Day. I remember in middle school I was obsessed with this girl Anne, I never spoke to her once but she was in my homeroom so it was meant to be. Anne got a “Valentine’s gram” from Steven, a boy I’d never met before but he had to be evil because he made me upset. I was done for. After all, middle school is where you’re meant to meet the person you spend the rest of your life with, or at least the next three months. I lived like this through the next six years, finding a new girl to passively pursue and all the while never having the confidence to say a word about how I felt.
You have to understand, from my perspective I was at the end of my life. 17 is basically 20 and 20 is half of 40 and Mitch Hedberg died when he was 37 so time was not on my side. It was a complete disaster, and I was just sitting there doing nothing, nothing but playing Grand Theft Auto V and eating the bag of Reese’s cups my mom bought for me until I got a head cold. Aside from those two all-American pastimes, I thought about what a good boyfriend I would be, and as I ate my third personal sized microwave pizza I just didn’t get why people couldn’t see that.
I did think a lot about what I would do if someone gave me a chance. First, she’d pick me up in her car, I won’t be the one driving because roads make my hands sweat and send me into a full blown panic. We’d go somewhere classy, like the Cheesecake Factory, and I’d tell her ,“Pick whatever you want, so long as what you want fits into the amount of money my mom is letting me spend on her debit card. But really, whatever you want.” Then we’d stroll around the mall, I’d hold her hand as we both awkwardly avoided eye contact with the kiosk employees. Next we’d come back to my house, and exchange gifts. My perfect gift would be a Whitman’s sampler, a new coat- hand tailored perhaps, some war gaming miniatures- it’s a hobby of mine, a Blu Ray box set of Star Trek Deep space nine, and whatever else she’d like to buy me in addition to that. I’d probably get her cash since I paid for dinner. I was devastated every year that I wasn’t doing this, I must be deficient if I was alone. That’s not true, and if I had just accepted that, I would have been happier.
Youth is wasted on the young, that’s what the three old women I play poker with every week tell me. When we’re young we don’t have the foresight to know that things will be OK, we freak out and send some regrettable text messages at 4 a.m. There’s nothing wrong with living fast and taking names, but when you feel down, you need to grant yourself the courtesy of saying, “They were annoying and smelled like a gas station anyways.” Now that I have a girlfriend a lot of the angst and pressure is gone, but I haven’t forgotten the feeling.
Dear reader, one day you might be as cool as me. You might be able to go on that date and still plant yourself in a chair and play video games until you can’t feel your fingers. Today, tell someone, anyone, that you love them, or just say you care. This can be complicated if you’ve never met this person in your life, but take a chance, who knows what’ll happen
