A hate love relationship

For those of you who read the title and thought I made a mistake, that it should be "love-hate relationship," you are wrong. I meant it to be a hate love relationship, because at the moment I do hate love. It's 11 days until Valentine's Day, or as some prefer to put it, Single's Awareness Day. I've heard Valentine's Day is particularly big in Italy. I mean, it is the heart of romance culture, how could it not be big? I can already tell that this is going to be true, because stores are starting to put stuff out for it. Today I saw a heart shaped red frying pan in a store window, and I know this sounds really dorky, but I thought it was really cool. That's the thing, I always see all these cute little Valentine's Day gifts, and I always look at the flowers, and smell them, and admire them. I also constantly imagine going on dates to different places that I visit. This is something I pretty much do year-round, but the instinct is particularly strong this time of year. But then the day comes, and it's a big disappointment, because nothing happens. Not that I really expect anything to happen, but somewhere in my hopelessly romantic dreams, I think it will. I can try to make it better by going out with girls or buying myself a nice little gift, but that just calls attention to the unpleasant truth: I am single on a day that is devoted to couples. Now I still have 10 days to find myself a Valentine, so I'm not giving up hope completely. I do have one rule however: said man must be closer in age to me than to my dad; so, for those of you who have been keeping up with the previous blogs, Dario is not a contestant.

When I was in Assisi last weekend our tour guide told us a story of St. Valentine. I looked it up on a Catholic website to verify it, but I didn't find anything similar. So it's probably a legend, but I really don't care because it's a cute story. The tour guide said that St. Valentine lived in a small village in Italy when the Greeks and Romans were fighting. Every young man in the village had to go fight in the war as soon as he came of age. The only exception was for married men. They did not have to fight in the war because it would anger their wives, and then their wives would demand more when they got home. The wives would say, "You spent years and years away fighting at war, now you come home, and you are going to have to fight with me." And so the wives would always get their way. St. Valentine was a peaceful man and was saddened to see all of the young men in his village sent off to war. So he decided to use the marriage exception to his advantage. This is how he began his role as village matchmaker. He would arrange for young couples to get together and get married, and then the males would not have to go off to war. This is how the tradition of Valentine's Day got started and how St. Valentine became the patron saint of lovers (also a myth, according to the Catholic website). But, in the spirit of the season, I am going to choose to believe this little legend and ask for the intercession of St. Valentine to make me a match.

By the way, it is still raining, but I didn't think anyone would be interested in reading another post about that.