Glad the Valentine’s Day fracas is over, till next year of course! Not sour grapes. I’m actually a hopeless romantic and will watch just about any cheesy RomCom. I even like that classic ballad by Martina McBride. “And even if the sun refused to shine, even if romance ran out of rhyme, you would still have my heart, until the end of time, you’re all I need, my love, my valentine…” but there’s just something tacky about how “lovers” seize this one day and God help you if you’re Single on February 14th! I guess every relationship has a start date and if you happen to meet the love of your life on Valentine’s Day, so be it. If you’re genuinely out to find love or one of the many couples celebrating your anniversary, then I guess that’s okay. My problem is those taking advantage of naïve teens or cheating on their spouses and I know it’s not my place to tell grown folks what to do but I will. Don’t do it! Too late? Well, I tried. Retailers and Hoteliers couldn’t care less. Valentine’s Day is good for business and to be completely honest, if I had something to sell, I guess I would too. Gotta make that money, right? I was just thinking about my dating history. Suddenly, I feel old! You know how you get to a certain age and start reflecting on all the choices you’ve made. I’ve been on some bad and good dates. Overall, my experiences haven’t been anything I couldn’t handle considering what some people have had to deal with. I’d say the bad dates I went on, and I need to point out here that it wasn’t on Valentine’s Day, included one where the guy couldn’t seem to make up his mind where he wanted us to go and that made me suspect two things. Either he was up to something or hiding something. Long story short, I didn’t go out with him again. My other not-so-great date was some dude who just couldn’t keep his hands to himself. First of all, I’m anti PDA and anyone who knows me knows that. Secondly, it was the 1st date. Why did this guy think I’d be into him that fast? I know the whole point of dating is to get to know someone and get a “feel” of how things could turn out, so to speak but still, that man just made me so uncomfortable and I couldn’t wait to leave. My most memorable dates were really simple. I mentioned movies earlier and there’s a guy I loved going to the movies with. We would talk for hours about the movie and then set the next movie date and it was all innocent and sweet. Sometimes he paid. Sometimes I did. It didn’t really matter. Didn’t feel like I had to dress up and he didn’t feel like he had to borrow a friend’s car or make up some non-existent high-paying job to impress me. He was respectful and kind. We had fun but we both moved on and haven’t spoken in years. No animosity. Life just happened!
