Resist the Holiday

Did you have a good Valentine's Day?

This question was posed to me, ridiculously, by a woman who should know better. I mean, I had a fine Valentine's Day for someone who is so far from having a Valentine that an e-card from a sister is the bomb.

Okay, she's not really my sister, but the e-card came from someone I've known over twenty years. She's adorable: brains plus beauty, accomplished, sophisticated, and way to smart to fall for me. Rest assured, I've tried, but that dog won't hunt. So she's like my sister, except maybe with me having a way inappropriate crush sometimes.

But the one asking me how my VD was, well... She's someone I see in the course of my day to day existence, because I traverse her workplace in the course of spending my meager earnings. In other words, she's a cashier.

But what a cashier she is. Yubba.

Thing is, I have beautiful women take my money all the time and I don't ask them out. But in our chance encounters, I found myself chatting her up. As in there was enough common ground I wasn't the only one talking in this 'chat.'

Sometimes, I had my kiddos with me when she was ringing me up. I'm not going to put someone on the spot by asking them out in front of my kids, and I'm not the sort of Dad who wants his kiddos to start forming step-mother fantasies when all Dad is thinking is 'Maybe I could get to know her better...'

So one day when I was alone and our paths crossed for commercial reasons, I asked her for her number.

"I'm too young," she said.

Too young?

"I'm only 24," she said.

Well, I won't hold that against you. This one time, I was 24 for a whole year, nothing to be done.

Yes, I know it's an age difference dear reader. But this is a 24-year-old who does not come with an implanted iPod. I wouldn't have asked for her number if I thought we'd run out of conversation when we got to Presidents before Clinton. It's not like I'm cruising middle schools.

Anyway, she had decided she was too young. Actually, no, she only decided I was too old, but blaming her youth seemed polite, I think.

How was my Valentine's Day? It would have been better, theoretically, if I had gotten her number instead of hearing that I probably remember when there were no cars.

I do remember when there were no blogs. No such thing as email. Text messaging was called passing notes when I was 24. But that didn't help the VD thing.

I'm reminded (maybe because it's playing at concert volume on my hi-fi right now) of the Pogue's 'Fairytale of New York.' I'm not bitter about Christmas despite being basically given divorce papers on one Yuletide only to be given walking papers the following one. But the lyric to that song, the general sense of dissolution with the institution of Christmas, I can relate to that on some levels when it comes to February 14...

So Happy Valentine's my ass...