Sunday, February 1, 2009

Unsolicited Advice #12: St. Valentine's Day


This unfortunate holiday is peppered with land mines and rat traps for the hopeful young romantic with any self-respect.  Chocolates in heart shaped boxes are acceptable gifts for your daughter or grandmother, but are not okay for someone you want to sleep with anytime soon.  Even in this grim age which has grown deaf to the language of flowers, a dozen roses still transmits a clear signal concerning a donor's sentiments.  However, snooty young ladies everywhere will not fail to discern an unflattering lack of reflection in the choice of blossom.

The sensitive lover will turn to handmade gifts and cards and creatively selected bouquets (perhaps including barren branches).  Tasteful gifts can also originate in the examination of the donor's own many loves (love for books, love for Scandinavian death metal, and so forth).  

And on a petty personal note, one of the authors' regrettable past boyfriends informed her upon the receipt of a complete set of Proust's In Search of Lost Time, bound in beautiful vintage hardcover, that the gift was inappropriate because it reflected her passion, not his.  He was wrong.

This post co-authored by gander and Seaspawn and Seawrack.

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