The New Valentine’s Me

Remember the good old days when Valentine’s Day was wonderful?

Me, neither.

Seems it’s so often filled with angst instead of love and romance.

If you’re in love, it can be a great day to celebrate your relationship by going out together and investing lots of cash on your loved one in hopes that the evening may or may not return on your investment. And by that, I mean finding out if she or he will share the chocolate with you.

If you’re not in love, or not with the one you love, there is the danger of cynicism or random feelings of wanting to punch something, and by that, I mean the Valentine’s card display at your local pharmacy. Please don’t do that, because it’s unbecoming to be on all fours cleaning up a mess of cards and muttering, “Damn those medication side effects.”

By now, I either have your attention or you are deleting pictures from your phone because your storage is full. Which brings me to my point of this Valentine’s Day message of love. See, I’m getting older, and when it turned 2018, I made a very quiet promise to myself that I would let the real me out. The unabridged version, the version you may not like. I may end up with fewer friends. But I think I will feel better about myself. To that end, and for today, I have a few words.

If you really love someone, you will never, ever send them, on “Messenger”, one of those cartoons or photos or videos that people send around at holidays and other times when they see something inspiring, which usually follows large amounts of caffeine consumption. If you love someone, you will never, ever send the video of that 5-year-old who sings like the next Beverly Sills. You won’t even send the cool one of the hands passing a glowing ball of light to each other. And you especially will not send a picture of Valentine’s roses.

Why?

Because I, like millions of people around the world, get the “Your storage is almost full” message on my phone quite regularly. And I just spent an hour deleting, one by one, a bunch of these things from Messenger to free up enough space to take my own pictures, get apps for things I need or want, and so on.

Not to be mean or ungrateful, but STOP IT. Not to be unkind, but STOP IT. Not to be bossy, but STOPPPPPP ITTTTT. For everyone’s sake, STOP IT. Also, some of them may be insidiously harmful in other ways (viruses or hacking.)

If you really, really love someone, or even might like them, you will call them, visit them, send a handwritten note (WHAT?!?!?), email, text, or message them with your own real words. Yes, real words. Like the kind we used to make up. Before pre-fab messages were born. Those really were the good old days, the days of awkwardly saying, from the heart, “I’m interested in getting to know you” or the famed “I love you.”

So please – skip the pictures that we’ve all seen a thousand times. RESIST the temptation to send that picture of a bouquet of flowers to everyone on your Messenger list.

JUST. STOP. IT.

Any questions?

PS – I love you.

Happy Valentine’s Day!