Cult of Jef

I don’t con­sider myself much of a roman­tic, but I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Valentine’s Day. When I was younger, I enjoyed dec­o­rat­ing a white paper bag with pink and red hearts, cut metic­u­lously from con­struc­tion paper, for the sole pur­pose of receiv­ing valen­tines from my class­mates. Later, I would care­fully peruse the hol­i­day aisle at K-Mart, weigh­ing my options between Peanuts, Looney Toons, and Dis­ney before finally choos­ing a pack­age of valen­tines that expressed the essence of my love for all the kids in my class. I would thought­fully match the valen­tine accord­ing to my rap­port with that stu­dent. There­fore, my best friend, Kelly, received the cov­eted Don­ald Duck in the astro­naut suit, while Sharon and her wrap-around retainer received a valen­tine with a B-List Dis­ney char­ac­ter. Some­times, if I felt so inspired, I might per­son­al­ize the valen­tine with a mes­sage such as, “Stay cool.”

On Feb­ru­ary 14th, I would drop a valen­tine into each classmate’s dec­o­rated bag before gorg­ing myself on cup­cakes, cook­ies, and punch with­out a sec­ond thought for chil­dren starv­ing in third world coun­tries. After­wards, fly­ing high on a killer sugar buzz, we would empty our sacks on our desks and open our valen­tines. It all went so well until the 5th grade, when in the midst of an envelope-ripping frenzy, I real­ized that I had for­got­ten Randy Fer­gu­son. Even though I had worked straight from my home room list, some­how, Randy had been passed over and I lost that lov­ing feel­ing. I still think of Randy from time to time and won­der what he’s doing now. I won­der if he’s hap­pily mar­ried with a fam­ily of his own, or whether, instead, he is sleep­ing on a park bench some­where, sip­ping out of a brown paper bag.  I ques­tion if, per­haps, I could have saved a life if I had only given another ten-year-old boy a piece of card with a por­trait of Goofy ask­ing him to be mine.  Alas, I’ll never know.

His­tor­i­cally, Valentine’s Day is a cel­e­bra­tion of a Catholic mar­tyr who was beaten to death and beheaded because he secretly mar­ried cou­ples dur­ing the reign of Claudius the Cruel. It seems Claudius had can­celled all mar­riages and engage­ments because he believed them to be the rea­son he had trou­ble find­ing sol­diers for his army. No roses, candy, flow­ers, cup­cakes, punch, or paper bags dec­o­rated with hearts were involved. Strangely enough, it’s sort of like cel­e­brat­ing Vegan Day by eat­ing a sir­loin steak or world peace with a box­ing match.

Gen­er­ally, men tend to receive the short end of the stick when it comes to choos­ing the per­fect present to give on Feb­ru­ary 14th. Any­thing a woman says from Jan­u­ary 1st until V-Day is a pos­si­ble clue. Some men learn the hard way that when a woman says she really doesn’t expect any­thing or want him to go to a lot of trou­ble for Valentine’s Day, it’s basi­cally a lie. Of course she wants him to do some­thing to prove that he thinks she is a god­dess on a moun­tain­top burn­ing like a sil­ver flame! The chal­lenge is to decide whether to give lin­gerie, flow­ers, or a dia­mond, but I say you can never go wrong with choco­late. Even if she’s on a diet or a fit­ness fanatic, she’ll love chocolate–and if she’s bulimic, she’ll enjoy it twice as much! For men, on the other hand, there is only one obvi­ous choice: sex. Beer can do in a pinch, but, ladies, wouldn’t you pre­fer to give him some­thing where his atten­tion is on you and not the con­tents of a bot­tle or can?

For some, valen­tine anx­i­ety is not a symp­tom of the lack of the right gift, but rather Mr. or Miss Right. In their minds, to be sin­gle on Feb­ru­ary 14th is akin to walk­ing around with the word LOSER stamped on their fore­heads. They claim to be unhappy because they don’t have any­one in their life. I say to these peo­ple, “Adopt a home­less per­son!” How­ever, they argue that they want some­one spe­cial. “Adopt a mentally-challenged per­son!” I reply, but it seems, instead, that they want some­body to com­plete them. So they imme­di­ately look around for a des­per­ate date for V.D.; any­one with a pulse is eli­gi­ble. The date is typ­i­cally a recipe for dis­as­ter and results in tears and some­one hurl­ing flam­ing shish kebob skew­ers while the other runs for his life–or at least that’s been my experience.

Some­how, it seems that we miss the whole point, no pun intended, of Valentine’s Day. Instead of think­ing of roman­tic love, which gen­er­ally focuses on our own desires and yearn­ings, we should expand our inter­pre­ta­tion to include agape, a self-less and spir­i­tual love that we can share with the whole world. Instead of buy­ing your kids more candy they don’t need, sug­gest they give it to me, or make a dona­tion to an orga­ni­za­tion that works toward elim­i­nat­ing world hunger. If you know a cou­ple with chil­dren that never seem to have time for them­selves, sur­prise them by offer­ing for you and your sig­nif­i­cant other to baby-sit while they go out and trip the lights fan­tas­tic.  Then after the kids go to sleep, mess around in the couple’s bed.  If you find your­self with­out a date, take a home­less per­son to Dave & Busters; you’ll have some­one to play air hockey with. But why stop there? Why not extend Valentine’s Day to 365 days a year by giv­ing your time and energy to one of the many orga­ni­za­tions that need vol­un­teers? Help do main­te­nance at a local church, vol­un­teer to mow an elderly neighbor’s lawn, or ask the four-star chef who lives on the cor­ner if he needs any­one to sam­ple his food to make sure it’s not poi­soned?  One can never be too sure these days …

I always wanted to read to chil­dren, so I vol­un­teered to read to the sec­ond grade class of a local ele­men­tary school. How­ever, it seems that my choice of mate­r­ial was not appro­pri­ate. Since chil­dren were men­tioned in the title, I assumed, nat­u­rally that Jackie Collins’ Hol­ly­wood Kids would be a good choice, but it seems that unhook­ing a bra is not some­thing that is cov­ered in a sec­ond grade boy’s cur­ricu­lum. Sadly, he will have to learn that later in the streets. Next, I thought I would draw atten­tion to per­sonal safety with Car­olyn Har­ris Johnson’s Come With Daddy: Child Murder-Suicide After Fam­ily Break­down, but this choice was nixed for rea­sons never fully explained to me. Finally, I asked the teacher for a rec­om­men­da­tion, and she sug­gested a nature story with ani­mals, one that presents a bold mes­sage which chil­dren can remem­ber for the rest of their lives. I smiled smugly, know­ing just the book for the job. As a result of our con­ver­sa­tion, this week, I will be read­ing from Peter Benchley’s Jaws. Sigh … It feels good to give a gift that will keep on giv­ing. This one’s for you, Randy!