Time-warping for Valentine’s Day

it the deck! Next Tuesday is Valentine’s Day!

V-Day is one of those quasi-holidays that can be problematic for some of us guys. Taxing, maybe. Or perhaps flummoxing?

Looking back, the strangeness of it all started for me when I was young and innocent. One thing that we would do at school every year was to swap out valentines. It was mandatory all through grade school to give a card to each of your classmates, boys and girls alike. As a third grader, the cards I gave my buddies would say something like “be my pal,” or “you’re a super friend,” whereas the ones for girls would be “you’re a special person,” and so forth. There was none of that kissy stuff, no siree bub, not for an 8-year-old with a runny nose.

All that began to shift a couple of years later. Valentine’s Day started getting weird, around say the fifth or sixth grade, that period when boys start becoming aware of what girls are. I mean, really. It’s when you’re still a card-carrying member of the Little Rascal’s He-Man Woman Haters Club but sorta’ kinda’ wanna’ sneak a glance at girls. Oh, the flummoxation!

I don’t know what St. Valentine himself would think if he knew what he begat all those centuries ago, but one thing’s for sure, there’s nothing like a chocolate valentine.

With coffee. It’s a go-to cure-all.

You know, like the Beatles’ song: “All You Need is Coffee.”

I’ll add that to my V-D mixtape, along with “Coffee Will Keep Us Together” by Captain and Tennille, “Crazy Little Thing Called Coffee” by Queen, and Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Coffee.”

Speaking of music, I was watching a music video on the internet last weekend. I can’t remember exactly who it was, but I know it was of the singers du jour, and I’m not sure if the artist’s name was one or two syllables or included a number.

Actually, I wasn’t sure if they were still making videos. But I probably haven’t been paying attention, and anyway, I guess I got my fill back in the 80s when MTV was new and exciting and aired video after video all day long.

The current videos are not that much different. There’s singing and dancing, and guys are still posing and girls are still cavorting. Not much change from the 80s there, except maybe for the state of undress, to which the parents say, “shameful.”

Now comes the time warp.

“Shameful,” said my parents a few years ago. “Those dang fool kids and their rock ‘n roll and jumping around like wild animals.”

Yes, they really said that. Or something very similar.

But I got to thinking, way back before I was born – and I did my homework on this – those same parents, when they were teenagers, were jumping around with their dang fool Jitterbug. And what about that wacky Charleston? Or the jumpin’ jivin’ Lindy Hop?

Anyway, I discovered that my penchant for old dance crazes stems from watching old ‘30s and ‘40s Hollywood movies. You can see snippets of them on YouTube, just like old-timey videos.

That big band music was pretty hot, too, a real departure from what popular music was before R&B came into the picture. I can imagine the old folks back then saying the same thing some parents are saying about popular music these days, and my parents when I was a teenager in the 60s.

They say those were innocent times, simple and decent.

But I’m not so sure. I mean, from what I hear from other people who were in school in the 50s and 60s, it was a pretty bizarre, if not perplexing, time. You had that Cold War thing going on, and you were reminded over and over at school that “the bomb” could happen at any time and you only had a few seconds warning. Kind of made one a little uptight.

But I digress.

Back to the whole Valentine’s Day thing. It does go back centuries but really took off after the introduction of Valentine’s Day greeting cards in 1857. Nowadays, a card may not be enough, and your true love may be expecting a big bouquet of roses or maybe even a skywriter spelling out your sentiments at $6,000 for ten letters.

With “V” Day cometh you never know what your Valentine may like.

When it comes to practicality, however, there is the 1819 Old Farmers Almanac’s advice for married men: “Now is your time to see that your women shall not complain for wood in the summer. Let your wood-house be well-filled, that they need not be obliged to blow out their brains over brush, old punk and cow dung.”

That would be true love. Not to mention a time warp.