I allow myself a small smile as I stand behind the young man with multiple facial piercings and the white hoodie with lines of black barbed wire streaking across it and he's buying a pink and white teddy bear with a ribbon that says, "we weally weally wuv you."  Normally if I saw this guy on the wrong side of town I would make sure my backpack was securely lashed to my shoulders. Instead I want to know him, share a diet Coke, talk about junk mail or something.


I don't like Valentine's Day. There isn't a romantic bone in my body and I don't apologize. I'm right and the rest of you guys are wrong.  I've always been a  practiced realist shying away from anything remotely fairy-talish unless I'm with young children and then it's fun to see how long I can keep the fantasy story going until they finally roll their shrewd little eyes at me.  Romance bores me and I'd rather sit through a 60-minute car chase than endure five minutes of chick flick annoyance.  Those of my nature abhor public affection, stacks of Danielle Steele paperbacks and those whiny irritating Barry Manilow lyrics.


But I am married to a Don Juan in white Nikes who wants to hold my hand on a walk and dance to Presley's I Can't Help Falling in Love With You while exchanging soulful looks and trivial cutsie-pie banter. I only talk when necessary, a functional conversationalist so said the marriage counselor, and small talk God forbid romantic small talk would cause me to suffer a seizure or my eyeballs to bleed.


 I reluctantly admit I am lucky to have a man this enamored with me when I barely drop him a crumb of affectionate interest.  I am a woman who wants only the mechanics of a relationship, the nuts and bolts so to speak. On Tuesdays I iron his shirts and I send cards and birthday gifts to his out of town grandchildren and I am exceedingly nice to his social-climbing rude sister who owns 86 pairs of shoes, puh-leez.  I do what needs to be done to keep him clean and comfortable as well as his environment and I bake pies without being asked and clean his bathroom without too much grumbling.  Just don't talk baby talk to me at the dinner table or anywhere else.  And I will stay with you forever, my love.