V Day

Jennifer, her long blonde hair inspiring envy in all female shoppers around her, waltzed up the seasonal aisle in Walmart, perusing the shelves bedecked with lurid red, pink, and white objects, surely designed as optical tourture devices.

"You're going to have a Valentine's Day this year," she asserted.

To me it sounded like she had said: "You're going to have a heart attack, you're going to file for chapter eleven bankruptcy, you're going to catch the plague from walking in a Canterbury train station, you're going to get cancer from eating those Fruity Pebbles." As if the greeting card holiday was a kind of traumatic event falling down upon humanity once a year.

She then pulled down a carton of chocolate golf balls which proclaimed, "Wanna play around?" on their cellophane surfaces, causing me to blanche and cling to the nearest hot-pink stuffed monstrosity for support.

What's a girl to do?

I have often proclaimed that I have the emotional maturity of a small child, with the kind of committment phobia that only years of having a father like mine can give to a girl. I have insisted that I am the mean one, the half of the relationship which will most certainly be the cause of every fight, argument, or hurled inanimate object. I consistantly prove myself to be so.
Just look back in time. I have argued with people regarding the following meaningless things, just so I can argue:

1. How much some beads cost. Like, three beads.

2. Who took which pictures on a roll of film.

3. Soda, or pop?

4. Who sucked more as a writer, Hemingway or Fitzgerald (they both are essentially the same style).

5. How to properly make a bed (military or hospital).

6. Why no one should touch my pillows, why I have to wash clothing if I spill water on them when they are already clean, why I must bag my own groceries, why I must arrange things by size and shape, why this is not abnormal at all, but a smart thing to do.

Yeah. So how is a jerk like me to, overnight, become sensitive and understanding, then channel all that into "romance" which I am not all that sure really exists outside of those cheesy novels I find in the grocery store. Three for a dollar at the library. Or you can just bring in some old ones and trade. I know these things.

See, all that I know boils down to useless information, nothing helpful like how to change a tire or figure out a 15% tip. I know how to snort cocaine so as not to lose any of the powder--this will never come in handy. I know that babies are not born with kneecaps. I know how to buy octopus and shellfish. I don't eat either.

So now that this Idiot Girl has found a guy other than Man Behind the Video Store Counter Who Smiled at Me Once and Guy From Kroger Who Does Not Flinch and Avert His Eyes in My Presence, I am left without what most humans agree should come with a person: an instruction manual. I get not handing them out when you meet someone, but could I not have been born with one for myself? Just for reference?I could use one.

Plus one to show me how to work my phone. This is getting pathetic.