As being one half of a relationship I am ultimately forced to partake in Valentine’s Day even though neither of us really wants to. It something that society expects I guess otherwise people wouldn’t be asking us both what we are doing for Valentine’s Day.

I’m going to begin this column with a disclaimer. In no way, shape or form do I enjoy playing any Madden football game, period. So there is a little animosity when I discuss them.

I grew out of them about four years ago when I had the epiphany that this game does nothing but infuriate me with its mindless and tedious content. This content exists as a poor substitution for the developers, who have run out of ways to improve the game’s ability to represent an actual sporting event.

Upon realizing that the games really couldn’t change all that much from year to year, the programmers all of a sudden decided the way to improve this game is by letting people be a general manager. I’m sure once this idea has gotten soggy they will undoubtedly let players control and manage their cheerleading squads during games allowing other team to be distracted by their jiggling reproductive organs.

But with all that said, I’m not going to say that this game didn’t contribute to my understanding of a relationship. Back when I did play and care about the game, my friends and I would get together and draft players and go through a whole season. It was a big event in the house, one that rivaled any national holiday including the made-up ones like Secretaries’ Day.

We would spend the days beforehand planning everything out: We discussed what picks we would make, what we would spend on our team’s advertising, what position we would leave open to trade for our draft pick that would be useless because we could never make it past one season.

After all was said and done, nothing would ever go as planned and would ultimately only have one person in the play off and everyone else would sit around waiting for them to lose so we could start the whole thing over again. It was, upon looking back, a big disappointment, but nonetheless something I had to do as a member of a household.

It’s just like Valentine’s Day. As being one half of a relationship I am ultimately forced to partake in Valentine’s Day even though neither of us really wants to.

It’s something that society expects, I guess, otherwise people wouldn’t be asking us both what we are doing for Valentine’s Day. It’s beginning to make me feel like if I don’t partake in the festivities that my relationship will become null and void with no possibility for a refund.

The planning for Valentine’s Day is as intense as those days before our pretend draft. I am being forced to plan every moment of the day and imagine every possible outcome. Only to be screwed by the “Madden B.S. effect” at the last moment.

It’s sad that we are still at this point in society where other people expect us to partake in holidays that really just end up leaving us confused the next morning and wondering why we just spent so much money. It’s not like Valentine’s Day ever brings anything new to a relationship.

Then again, I suppose that without Valentine’s Day there would be a fair amount of high schoolers who would remain virgins until they attend their first kegger in college, but there is always prom.

So I am ultimately forced to plan my own demise. I know that no matter what I plan it’s not going to work out and I will be scraping together some attempt to impress others around me the next day, but here’s to trying.

> Comments