I know, I know. You’re asking, “Elliot, what did you do for Valentine’s Day this year?”

Well, friends, ’tis a sad tale. Mary is in the Caribbean on a cruise right now with about a dozen of our friends, having a fantastic time. I’m in Vancouver, and as is so often the case here during the winter, it is raining. Mary sent a card before she left, and I arranged to have flowers delivered on the ship, but there was no Valentine’s Day date. This is not something that I have had to spend a lot of time coming to terms with, since out of my 28 years, I have been in a relationship on Valentine’s Day exactly three times. And oddly enough, exactly none of those three times have I been close enough (geographically) to my significant other to actually see them on February 14.

So instead of going out, I had a romantic evening with my roommate Tony. We ate spaghetti and watched a romantic comedy. It was pretty fun, actually; Valentine’s Day usually has been for me. It has never been a time to reflect wistfully on an unsuccessful love life. More often than not, it has been a good time to get together with friends and enjoy each other’s company. That’s not a bad way to spend the day, especially since a plausible case can be made (according to Wikipedia, at least) that Valentine’s Day had nothing to do with romantic love until Chaucer made the connection in the 1380s.

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