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Chip Brown.

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Valen-Time Part 2 This is a sequel to the Valentines day article I wrote in 2000. I meant to write one every year but like most men...I am 6 years late. You can read the original article at: http://www.maynardville.com/article/i6.htm THE TRUTH OF VALENTINES DAY: Valentine's Day is based on the story of a 200 AD priest named Valentine. Emperor Claudius did away with marriages because he decided single men made better soldiers, because single men can use both their hands for fighting, whereas married men always need one hand free to answer the phone and tell the wife when they will be home. Well, Old Valentine thought that was pretty terrible, and started performing illegal marriages. Next thing you know, Valentine gets tossed in the clink, where he meets a blind woman. Valentine miraculously heals her blindness, after which she immediately says, "you don't look like like Johnny Depp!" She wants no more to do with him! He writes her a farewell message, and signs it "from your Valentine." The phrase sticks, but not so everlasting is Val, who gets executed. So then they go and make a Saint out of old Valentine. The Romans then start holding a festival in his honor and sending love notes to those they were affectionate towards or possibly just wished to well you know… Hundreds of years later St. Hallmark comes along and figures a way to cash in along with his right hand man St. Whittman's Sampler. St. Hallmark then draws some kissing monkey's on a piece of paper and convinces young men that the loves of their lives would enjoy getting this in the mail. Then St. Whittman makes some chocolates and puts them in a stomach shaped box (soon to be changed to a heart) and says, "Hey these go great with monkey kissing cards!" So we near another Valentines day. This is a day when most men are trying to come up with a way to again save their marriage for another year. Not me, I have been sitting here all night trying to figure a way to make a fortune off all this Internet stuff. Isn't it funny how at three in the morning two totally different concepts can merge? Valentines day is nothing but a marriage minefield. No man can live up to these unattainable expectations. We can barely remember to put the toilet seat down, but somehow we are supposed to remember to make dinner reservations? One year I made dinner reservations for Valentines Day before Christmas. No, it wasn't an exclusive restaurant that made me make them so early. It was simply that this was when I remembered it, and I knew realistically, I would never remember it again before Feb. 14th. Unfortunately, I forgot where I had made the reservations, and spent all Feb 13th calling restaurants asking if I had reservations there. I finally found a note I had made myself saying the reservations were at a place called "The Mountain Myst." How lucky was this? I had actually written something down and then found it again. How many of you knew "The Mountain Myst" went out of business in January? Yeah me neither. Not even did they not stay in business until my reservation, they didn't even call me to tell me. "Mr Brown, we can't meet your reservation because we are broke, might we recommend Krystals? Sure they're not upscale but they're likely to still be here on Valentines Day." Well you can imagine my wife's impending surprise when I drove her up to a vacant building with a "For lease" sign in the window. Especially since I had made her put on a blindfold a block earlier to heighten her surpise. Oh yeah she was going to be surprised that was for sure. So what would I do? What would any quick thinking man do? I sat there with the car stopped and tried to think of a fast one. Then it came to me... I complained loudly that this was the longest redlight I had ever seen! Yes, that was it! Her eyes were still closed she would never know we had been sitting in an abandoned parking lot for two minutes. But how could I explain the reverse sensation she would feel as I backed out of the parking space? About that time this young man came riding along on a bicycle. I don't know if he somehow gave me the idea or if it just came to me, but... I rolled down the window and blew the horn, screaming, "go on you butthole the light is green!" I backed up and then floored it as if passing a car at the redlight. Through a unique maneuver into the shrubbery the bicyclist avoided my speeding car. Now I am driving aimlessly down Kingston Pike with a blindfolded lady in my car and an irrate man peddling after me on a 10-speed. At each redlight he would catch me and start banging on my window and cursing. Being a quick thinker at each redlight I would turn up the radio and sing at the top of my lungs. I once even sang with Dave Faulk doing the traffic report. This was turning out to be an average Valentines Day for myself and my wife. I passed a Hooters and briefly had an idea and much more quickly thought better of it. But next door was a Red Lobster! Yes! Not exactly a Mountain Myst but then again they were still in business! After driving around for a while to lose the bicyclist I parked and removed my wife's blindfold! "Why did you blindfold me to come here?" wasn't exactly what I had hoped to hear, but it was better than what I would have heard at the abandoned parking lot. I guess that would have been..."Why are we here and why is that man and bicycle in those bushes?" But everything worked out and we have made it another six years to yet another Valentines Day. This year we have no reservations other than with our daughter Hannah. This year we will make do with filling out paper Valentines for Kindergarten. We'll probably just put in a DVD (most likely Sponge Bob's Valentines Special), pop some popcorn and watch a show with Hannah. Life is good!

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