UTB Love Week: The Single's Guide to Valentine’s Day
February 14, 2011 at 10:00 am
Valentine’s Day—the day you look around and realize what it must have felt like for the animals that didn’t find their names on Noah’s exclusive guest list. Seems like everyone's paired up but you.
Sure, you can tell yourself that you’re happily single, that things with Evan are totally gonna work out while he’s abroad in Paris, that you don’t care in the least bit that Sophia hasn’t texted you back in two weeks and five days...but do you hear yourself?! You’ve become a pathetic cliché!
Lucky for you, Valentine’s Day is all about the pathetic clichés. This is why we bring you The Single's Guide to Valentine's Day: A 10-Step Moper’s Manual.
Step 1: Run over to Wawa/FroGro/Uncommon Market, buy all the sugary snacks you can find that aren't heart-shaped with clashing red and pink wrappers, and settle down in your room pint-deep in some cookie dough ice cream.
Step 2: No self-pity is complete without an appropriate soundtrack. Crack open your CD case from middle school and dust off that Avril Lavigne album. Ugh, she totally gets you. Why does Jeff have to be so complicated? Why can't Ashley see that you're her Sk8er Boi?
Step 3: Obviously, what you need now is the perfect sappy movie. If you're going for a romantic comedy, try to pick an earlier one before Hugh Grant started looking so sad and wrinkly. If you're going for an authentic romance, choose one with a cast so gorgeous that you know you'll never be able to find a man/woman/robot like that.
Step 4: Adopt a cat. (WARNING: the sound of hundreds of bubbles bursting up ahead.) Unfortunately, Tina Fey filled the national "quirky" quota. (POP!) So unless you can do a mean Bristol impression, you should just embrace your inner cat lady. (Note: Guys can make exceptional cat ladies, too.)
Step 5: Think of what your mother would say. "Your father and I love your brother more than you." "Pfft! More like the Freshman Fifty!" "Remember when you were five and wanted to marry Daddy?"
Step 6: Comfort yourself by imagining what would happen if you left your room now to visit her, and on your way, a car came zooming down Walnut and knocked you down dead, and then she'd read about it in the DP and realize you were on your way to see her, and then she'd feel so awful and she'd go to your funeral and stand over your wake and cry and tell you that she really has loved you all along and that she's so sorry...but it'd all be too late. Imagine that.
Step 7: "If you could have dinner with one person in history, who would it be?" Last time you answered this question, you dutifully said Benjamin Franklin, but why can't the answer be a simple "me"? Why is eating alone so stigmatized? There's no shame in enjoying your own company. Treat yourself to a romantic dinner. You deserve a first date that's (finally!) not in the least bit awkward.
Step 8: Get a grip. It's a Monday, and you have a Psych and Econ midterm tomorrow, and a paper due for American Romanticism (sigh). Get your ass over to Van Pelt! But on your way, feel free to play Red Rover through all the obnoxious couples holding hands on Locust.
Step 9: Promise yourself that this is the last year you're going to let this happen. Next year, you're going to have the perfect partner with whom you'll really be able to spend an amazing Valentine's Day.
Step 10: Lather. Rinse. And wait 365 days to repeat.
Ed. Note: This guide is written completely objectively and has nothing whatsoever to do with the Valentine's Day plans of its author. In fact, she's got plenty of dates today. Seriously. So many. You should all be jealous.
And if you happen to find her sitting alone at White Dog Cafe eating a Fennel Scented Tuna by herself, it's only because the incredibly sexy second half of her very serious relationship is in the bathroom, and not because she's trying to acquire a taste for tuna in preparation for the future when she owns 136 cats. OK, MOM?!