Comments & Curiosities -- Peter Buffa

Roses are red, violets are blue, you know what Thursday is, so get on

with it. It’s free verse, OK? Two years ago, which should have been the

year 2000 unless my math fails me, I offered local male inhabitants a

“Survival Guide for Valentine’s Day.” I have received a tidal wave of

requests, assuming two is a tidal wave, to reprise the afore-mentioned

guide.

Then, as now, it is important to put this business of Valentine’s Day

in perspective. If you are a male who is involved with a female, your

life does not depend on how well you perform on Feb. 14. Only your

happiness does. We begin.

Lesson one: Don’t stress about buying or saying just the right thing.

Remember whatever you do, it will be wrong. It’s genetic. Somewhere along

that marvelously complex double-helix of DNA, we have a “wrong gift”

chromosome. Don’t beat yourself up about it. If she loves you, she’ll

smile, express pleasure and in your heart, you’ll know you did it wrong.

All men know that Valentine’s Day is fraught with risk, but the gift

giving part is especially dangerous. Year after year, the choices are

remarkably consistent. Candy, flowers, jewelry, lingerie, romantic

venues. If you plan to walk through the door armed with nothing but a box

of candy, it better be big and it better be Godiva or better. Jewelry.

Hmmm. The black-tie ads with the beautiful couple and the little box with

the eight-carat diamond, then she whispers “It’s perfect!” are very

stylish, but let’s get back to this planet, shall we?

Flowers used to be a safe bet, but there’s been an interesting twist

in recent years, which anyone who works in an office with a lot of women

has noticed. The whole flowers thing has become very, very, and I mean

very, competitive.

On V-Day, who gets flowers, who gets them from whom, and who gets the

biggest, showiest arrangements are noted and recorded quietly, but

carefully. The competition is subliminal, never discussed, but intense.

There were fewer flowers at Don Corleone’s funeral than there are in most

offices on Valentine’s Day now.

If you think I’m making this up, ask any receptionist. They know the

drill. By mid-morning, the delivery guys are stacking up in the lobby.

Inside, the tension is palpable. Timing is important. No one wants the

first delivery. Mid-morning is OK, but just before lunch is ideal.

Display is also very important. The ideal placement is somewhere

obvious, but not brazen. The recipient graciously accepts the initial

oohs and aahs, then pretends the flowers aren’t there the rest of the day

and says things like, “Oh, you mean those? They are lovely, aren’t they?”

But the flower game carries as much risk for the givee as for the

giver. Let’s say the delivery guy shows up with a Super Jumbo. This thing

is huge. He has it strapped to a refrigerator dolly and is having all

sorts of trouble getting it through the door. You can hear a pin drop as

everyone waits to see where he’s going.

“Diane?” he calls out, to no one in particular. Diane, of all people,

is the 22-year-old new hire in accounting. Oohs and aahs all around.

“Those are beautiful,” “How sweet,” yadda yadda yadda. Unfortunately for

Diane, the CEO happens to be a woman whose husband, in a moment of

dementia, decides to send his wife a very rare orchid that he ordered

weeks ago from an outrageously overpriced florist. That’s very special,

but the problem is, when the delivery guy shows up, this thing is in a

box about the size of a pager. All afternoon, it sits there on the boss’

credenza like the first bud of spring.

Meanwhile, Diane is still giving tours of her

botanical-garden-in-a-vase. Not a good thing. By the end of the day,

Diane is in personnel, turning in her keys and trying to decide if she

should Cobra her health insurance. She dumps her boyfriend like a load of

gravel, and what happens to the CEO’s husband cannot be discussed here.

Both men thought they found the perfect gift. But neither, obviously, had

a clue about DNA.

If you think flowers are risky, you should probably stay away from the

bungee jumping of Valentine’s Day gifts -- lingerie. Again, judging from

the ads, someone is buying the racy stuff, but nobody I know. First of

all, given the choice between buying lingerie and a prostate exam, most

men will be on the table and in the fetal position faster than you can

say “camisole.”

Talk about being out of your element. Giraffes on a frozen lake look

more at ease than men in the lingerie department. We just shouldn’t be

there. You know it, the saleswoman knows it, and God knows the women

around you know it.

The lingerie ads in the weekly Target or Sears inserts are especially

interesting. I want to personally shake the hand of the man who compounds

the mistake of buying lingerie by going somewhere with a checkout line to

do it. The man behind you is buying a cordless drill and the guy next to

you has some spackle and the “Die Hard II” DVD.

You, on the other hand, are trying to fold your satin peignoir and the

matching bra set into a smaller and smaller square, which is going well

until the checkout girl grabs it and unfurls it like the flag on Iwo

Jima. So give it some thought, my brothers. In fact, give it a lot of

thought.

I haven’t found out exactly what led to the original St. Valentines’

early demise, but I have a nagging feeling it had something to do with

gifts. Maybe that’s where “caveat emptor” really comes from. Happy

Valentine’s Day. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays.

He may be reached via e-mail at PtrB4@aol.com.