DEAR ST. VALENTINE — I’m not even sure if you’re the right person to address with this missive. But, for decades, a question has plagued me. Why did you force me to write a Valentine’s Day card in second grade to my immortal enemy, Gary Rutherford? My apologies if you weren’t the brains behind this forced labor. Perhaps, it’s yet another example of failed public education and my teacher, The Spinstress Lurch.
Oh. By the way? Besides being Valentine’s Day tomorrow, Feb. 14, it’s your birthday. May you be showered in yummy lard and processed sugar and wooed by loved ones with celebratory songs in the key of Castrato-R-flat. Do excuse me for being boorishly tardy in offering my condolences for your being beaten with clubs then beheaded by that shih tzu for brains, Roman emperor Claudius II, back in 275 A.D. Just because you defied his edict by secretly marrying young couples. What a grouch. Claude felt younger men were of better use as soldiers than grooms. I’m guessing the senior prom was ill-attended back in the third century.
Did you know there was ANOTHER priest named Valentine, right around the same time, who cured his captor’s daughter of blindness. Like church-sponsored confession, there’s always a catch. That particular Valentinus said he’d restore the girl’s sight — IF — her family converted to Christianity. That dear healer was brutally executed by Claudius as well.
Personally, except for the guilt factor, I don’t really see the link to romance and converting from, say, a Rotarian or Daughter of the American Revolution to a Catholic. I’m sure you know from your present vantage point, our modern Valentine’s Day is more closely related to an ancient Arcadian festival called Lykaia. It’s pretty darn gross, no offense, Val, so much so that even the licentious Romans felt it was, ahem — “… barbaric.”
All the boys on that Lykaia Day would eat a piece of meat from a communal pot. The lucky dude who ate the single piece of human flesh from the cauldron would be transformed into a wolf and have to live in the woods for a whole year. Then, he’d turn back to a human and return to the life humdrummia. Wolves were a symbol of being excellent hunters and, coincidentally, mid-February is when she-wolves are in heat.
She Wolves In Heat.
Good name for an all-girls’ band.
But, not an all-girls band from Iraq.
Anywho, Val. Later, the Roman festival was called Lupercalia. Once a year, young men would strip down naked or sport, like the modern Scottish male high on warm beer, just a skimpy loin cloth and run through the streets, which were lined with women of childbearing years. The gallivanting lads would whip the girls in some sort of science project that escapes me which would cause the girls to become fertile. You know. What they currently teach in California’s state taxpayer-funded DEI public elementary school education?
Crazy thing, it was in 498 A.D. when the pope honored you, St. Val. It had nothing to do with romance and that link would come much later, around 1380, with the fabled writer Chaucer and his romantic poem, “Parliament of Fowls.” I know. Forget the band name. “Parliament of Fowls” is the perfect synonym for California’s Democratic-run state government.
While it’s supposed to be an ancient, worldwide recognition of the start of a new year and fertility (again, the wolf mating season), I feel the holiday has lost its meaning. I blame public education, possibly you, and, certainly, The Spinstress Lurch.
When I was in second grade, we were directed by the elderly and immense Miss Lurch to hand-make Valentine’s Day cards for everyone in our class. Boys. Girls. Derrick, who sat in the back, grinning out of context and humming Doris Day songs. This meant I had to make a Valentine’s Day card for my arch enemy, Gary Rutherford. On the QT, I went to Lurch to explain that Gary and I fought before, during and after school. I felt no love, like, good wishes or bon voyage toward Gary, a 4X unwashed Neanderthal kid with a 92-pound head and a wild, flyaway Rasputin hairdo. On the bright side, Rutherford reached his final growth spurt (6-foot-8, 311 pounds) at age 7 and never had to worry about outgrowing his clothes. Worse? As science will attest, girls have cooties. I was forced to write out 18 neutered, pre-Human Resources Approved and generic Valentine’s Day cards for the young ladies in class. I cannot recall, from that chapter of my life, ever having a girl converse with me, unless it was, “… throw the ball back, you dullard.” The Valentine’s Day card. Was it some preparation for a lifetime of insincerity, dishonesty and failed relationships with the fairer sex? That males would pop for jewelry, flowers, chocolates, poetry, a new car. In the uneven bargain, would guys receive gifts of equal value? Metric wrenches? Beer? Chewing tobacco? A hunting dog? Uh, no. Thinking about my answer for a moment.
No. Still no.
Worse. Why was I forced to create, and sign, a Valentine’s Day card for — hock, spit, ptooey — the gargantuan child and same gender as me, Gary Rutherford?
Gary is red,
His brain is glue.
Stuck with you, in our shared parenthesis,
You filthy, dirty hated nemesis.
The meter? Questionable. But, not bad for a second-grader.
Well. In the spirit of the day, I forgive you, St. Valentine. On a cloud or reincarnated, I trust your head’s on straight, with no neck and shoulder aches and pains. Thanks for your labors, lending a hand, bringing together star-crossed lovers, creating a multi-billion-dollar industry built on guilt and processed sugar while making recalcitrant second graders labor over poetry oft insincere and lacking commitment. I remain …
Lifelong Santa Clarita Valley resident John Boston, with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist. “Naked Came the Novelist,” his long-awaited sequel to the bestselling, “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” is on sale at JohnBoston-Books.com. So are other fine books, including his two-part “SCV Monsters” series.
