THE SONIC BOOMER
It’s finally here — Valentine’s Day.
Many people consider Valentine’s Day to be a day of love; a day when you look around and your heart fills with joy as you realize how many of your family members, friends, even spouses love you; a day when you have a chance to return that love in an obvious way.
Now if you consider Valentine’s Day a day of love, you go out and buy flowers, greeting cards, sexy lingerie, anything that will make your peeps feel loved because, after all, you appreciate their admiration. In return, your peeps will shower you with gifts wrapped in red or pink, suggestive DVDs and/or candlelit dinners in restaurants. Lots of kisses and hugs and handholding will take place that day, because you and those around you consider Valentine’s Day to be a day of love.
But I know Valentine’s Day for what it really is — a subversive attempt by the candy makers of the world to steer us off our diets and into a ditch. Yes!
I mean, think about it. We started down this path of destruction on Halloween, a day that used to be about thin things like vampires and skeletons and ghosts, and somehow morphed into a celebration of all things sugar.
We continued right on into Thanksgiving, where we give thanks for many things, but mostly food. Wherever we went to celebrate, we started at the front door with a cocktail and some chocolate-covered cashews and ended up passed out in front of the television surrounded by pumpkin pie crumbs and a very happy dog. We took what the Pilgrims started (with a scrawny turkey and a handful of corn) and turned it into a full-blown culinary gorgefest.
And just in case we came to our senses the next day, we were immediately swirled into a month of holiday parties that ended with sugarplums in our heads and candy in our socks. We stumbled, blinded by the onset of diabetes, toward the end of December, where any person in their right mind would settle down and start gathering information for tax day. But no. We have to test our endurance with one more late-night bash — New Year’s Eve.
In short, we spend the last quarter of the year acting like irresponsible (but gleeful) loons and, by New Year’s Day, we have simply had enough. It may have been that final maraschino cherry that pushed us over the edge but, whatever it was, we are through. We take ourselves firmly in hand and drag our sorry butts down to the gym and plead with them to scandalize us back into shape and, for 43 days, we work out — bending, stretching, reaching, running and taking the stairs instead of the elevator.
We are blissfully unaware that waiting in the wings with a chocolately smirk on its heart-shaped face, is Valentine’s Day.
And I don’t care how hard you’ve worked over the past month and a half, when someone you love presents you with a red velvet heart filled with delectable bonbons, you are going to give them a huge hug, open that box and eat one.
Because you’ve been so sugar-deprived for so long, you will probably eat two.
That leaves about 22 bonbons sitting there, lonely and provocative with their “come-hither” chocolate swirls on top. Beckoning. Always beckoning.
Aaaaaaand, there you go.
