Monday 14 February 2000

Pic of the day: Valentine's Day card, special for you! (Depending on who you are, obviously...)

We Norwegians don't have a tradition of celebrating Valentine Day. Before the coming of the Internet, it was just another outlandish custom like Presidents' day or 4th of July. It probably still is, for the less netivated. But for us netizens, it is everywhere, even on the Norwegian part of the web. We are being assimilated. Resistance is futile. Then again, futile resistance is somewhat of a Norwegian specialty. But that's another story, and a long one too.

My first memory of the Valentine idea was, ironically, through the comic strip Peanuts ("Knøttene" in Norwegian). There I learned about the desperate drive to send Valentine cards, and the despair of waiting in vain for at least one such card. Now they will not have to worry about that ever again. Good grief, Charlie Brown.

Only through Internet did I learn that Valentine's Day was not just a literary device, but a quite real and quite harrowing experience to countless American boys and girls, men and women, and chocolate vendors. Here's what I have gleaned so far:

Valentine's Day (or VD for short) is not universally accepted as a good thing. It is scorned by some who don't have a date (which in this context means something like a darling), and by some who have a date but are too cheap to buy ridiculous, useless things just because the evil capitalist running dog lackeys have declared that on this day that's what you do. The useless things include childish cards with love motifs; flowers; chocolates; wine; combinations of the above.

Even if you are not dating, you can still do some flirting or some such that will supposedly be regarded as less serious since it is Valentine's Day. If I understand correctly. Don't bet your last pair of pants on it, though. I am a foreigner both to the Valentine thing and flirting in general.

My first memory that is vaguely romantic, I guess, was when I came home after playing with the small neighbor girl. (We did not have many neighbors, just one farm I could reach when I was small, the others were on the other side of the forest.) Someone gently teased me that we (the small girl and I) were "darlings". I don't remember what I said, but I remember that I liked the idea. I was almost certainly a preschooler, and she was even smaller. Not long after I came to the part of life where girls are just dumb and football is everything. As I was a total null at football, I was nothing. I sort of had to rebuild my life. But that's another story.

Despite knowing that one was not supposed to hang out with girls, I did play with the neighbor girl occasionally later too, I'm not sure how long. Neighbor girls are among the good things in life. Later I would slip over to watch TV. We did not have TV at home; and I, not yet Awakened, was just as much a slave of it as any other lazy bum. So I snuck in and watched TV with the neighbor girl. Her older siblings were much older, so that was basically it. Sometimes there were other friends, I think. My memories from my childhood are hazy at best, and TV disrupts the brain functions further. It was in black and white (actually black and blue) and it flickered. That I remember. I mostly watched cartoons.

Once or twice we also played in the hay. That was great fun, though it could have killed me. Hay and physical activity both increased my risk of asthma attacks, which were quite dangerous to me. Of course I also played in the hay at home with my brothers, but it was even more fun with the neighbor girl. I have sometimes later thought that it might have been even more fun if we could have done that when we were ten years older. Ahem. I did however leave home when I was fifteen, and I guess all in all that was a good thing.

I don't know where she is know, though I guess I could find out if I wanted to. I know she grew up to be a small but strong and smart young woman, of whom I have heard nothing but good. But I never knew that woman. I only knew the small girl, who would play with me when I was alone. And whose fortunate presence taught me that people are supposed to be darlings.

In other news, I called Germany today, to my best friend, the SuperWoman. And no, we did not whisper any sweet words of love. :) That would be the day ... Actually we talked about books and studies and stuff. And stuff and stuff and stuff ... you know how friendship is. I sort of promised to check a couple of books for her. I hope my health holds up so I can do that.

I'm not feeling perfectly well tonight. (Then again, why should I?) The infection under my left eye is back, and is probably the reason why my cheeks have been burning. And my throat feels tight, though I can still breathe through it without wheezing or something. It just feels constricted somehow. If this is my last ever entry, I guess it was not hypochondria after all ...

You know, I wish I could have ended this on as light a note as I started it, many hours ago. It was a good day, really. One of many good days. I wish it could last.