ST. VALENTINE’S DAY BLUES.

That time of the year has reared its head again. The midpoint of the calendar’s youngest month. It’s February and it is the 14^th day. This is St. Valentine’s Day. Usually considered a time to ‘express love and show affection’. That’s the general consensus and that’s also what the vast majority believe in. I wouldn’t know because for one thing, I haven’t had a valentine in my two decades on God’s green earth. Well this is Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana, (Mahama is doing a ‘good job’ or? *coughs*) and it’s a different ball game. For most, it pits the financial muscle of lovers against the spending ability of their partners. So you could say one’s financial muscle is directly proportional to his partner’s ability and it really doesn’t need a math genius to prove its basis. So for someone whose partner has a pretty ravenous appetite or a seemingly unquenchable thirst for gifts either in cash or in kind, you wouldn’t particularly be smiling when Valentine’s Day comes around especially when things aren’t looking up in your pocket.

But of course you have to ‘pay’ during this period, for some that’s

the key to the unlimited access to the ‘forbidden fruit’. Cliché but truth. Val’s day is a high octane game where someone most definitely becomes the prey and the other the predator. There is absolutely no middle ground. I used to think it was a myth that some guys intentionally picked up fights with their partners when February came around and looked to swiftly make amends when the storm had calmed down. Smartness or cowardice? I can’t tell. But even with that partner that is deemed to be at fault would readily swallow her pride and apologize even sometimes going extreme to show they are sorry. It’s an art of war and foul or fair means aren’t bound by any rules plus any strategy goes. Then some others manage to perfect the art of vanishing to utmost perfection so much such that Potter’s cloak has nothing on them. Then watch some ladies become unavailable to that one guy who takes two ‘trotros’ to work and say to other one with the Mercedes “oh I’m free on the 14^th.” It’s like that and also watch them casually drop subtle hints about what they want days to Val’s day like “This watch is old oo” or “See how this phone is giving me trouble.” A carefully-calculated way to let you know what she wants.

Some decide to brave the storm and be the men they profess to be. You know that guy that takes a salary advance to buy an iPhone 5s complete with all its accessories for his love, the girl returns the favour… He will be back to meet a nicely wrapped parcel at the feet of his bed. Hopes raised higher than Ronaldo’s jump and he’ll open it to see one ‘chase deer’ singlet and a boxer shorts in his favourite team’s colours. A lone tear streaks down his face for reasons known to him alone and mind you, it isn’t tears of joy. Then the other guy who takes a loan with atrocious interest rates to impress that girl he so dearly ‘loves’. He takes her on a candlelit dinner worth four figures in cedis. He too comes back to eagerly open the gift she got him. In the deceptively large parcel lies a pack of handkerchiefs and ‘kiwi’ shoe polish, that’s his four figure dinner reciprocated and it’s the girl’s way of expressing affection so can he complain? I have no gavel in my hands. I can’t judge.

That’s just few of the possible scenarios that play out during Val’s day and surely are bound to happen this time around as well. The single ones like myself would surely seek to pick a few lessons or two from whatever drama ensues. But then again, it’s Valentine’s Day and true love would be seen amidst the fake ones that would be on display that day as well. No matter what happens as well, there will be the group that will try to bash those who seek to express joy on that day. I can’t wrap my head around that but then doesn’t one of Newton’s laws state something about action and its opposite reaction? Do the math. We only stand to observe.

                                   HAPPY VAL’S DAY

@Mr_Labyrinth