COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:The most dangerous of holidays

Roses are red, violets are blue, Wednesday is Valentine’s Day, like you didn’t know that. It’s free verse, OK? Get over it.

Valentine’s Day is a big deal and it’s getting bigger every year. It’s fun. I’m fine with it. But it is unfair if you are of the male persuasion. Women definitely get the longer straw when it comes to Valentine’s Day. For male persons, it’s nerve-racking. Every man knows that Valentine’s Day is fraught with risk, but the gift-giving part is especially dangerous

I am here to help, my brothers. Don’t thank me. It’s my job. First of all, don’t stress about buying or saying just the right thing. Remember, whatever you do, it will be wrong. We can’t help it. It’s genetic. Somewhere along that 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 and express pleasure. But in your heart, you’ll know you did it wrong.

Year after year, the choices are remarkably consistent. Candy, flowers, jewelry, lingerie, romantic dates. Does anyone still give those heart-shaped, red boxes of candy? I would think not, but they must. They’re everywhere. Go ahead if you must, but if you plan to walk through the door armed with nothing but a box of candy, it better be Godiva or up.

Jewelry? Solid choice, hard to blow that one. The black-tie ads where he opens a little box with an eight-carat diamond and she whispers, “It’s perfect,” are very stylish, but let’s get back to this planet.

Flowers used to be a safe bet, but there has been an interesting twist in recent years as anyone who works in an office with a lot of non-males knows. There were fewer flowers at Don Corleone’s funeral than there are in most offices on Valentine’s Day these days, and the flowers thing has become very, very — and let me repeat — very competitive. On V-Day, who gets flowers, from whom, and who gets the biggest, showiest arrangements are noted and recorded — quietly but carefully. The competition is subtle, never discussed, always intense.

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. Presentation is also very important. The ideal placement is somewhere obvious, but not brazen. The recipient graciously accepts the initial oohs and ahs, 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. The 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 ahs all around, those are beautiful, very sweet, so forth and so on. Unfortunately for Diane, Joan-the-Boss’ husband, in a moment of dementia, decides to send his chief executive wife a very rare orchid that he ordered weeks ago from an outrageously overpriced florist. That’s very special, but the problem is that when the delivery guy shows up, this thing is in a box about the size of a stapler.

All afternoon, the ultra-special orchid sits there on the boss’ credenza like the first, lonely bud of spring. Meanwhile, Diane is still giving tours of her rain forest in a vase. Not good.

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 chief executive’s husband is too horrible to describe. Both men thought they found the perfect gift, but obviously, neither of them knew a thing about DNA.

Wait, here’s something different. If you want to send a card, try sending it from a love-themed themed city.

The post office of choice for Feb. 14 lovers? Loveland, Colo., which only makes sense. So many people want their sweetheart’s valentine to be postmarked from Loveland that the city has a special program just to handle the V-Day invasion. The Loveland Valentine Re-mailing Program started in 1947 in an effort to get the little town’s name out there. Envelopes filled with stamped, addressed Valentine’s Days cards arrive for weeks before the big day so they can be “re-mailed” from Loveland. Today, Loveland’s volunteer cupids re-mail more than 300,000 valentines and send them on their way to all 50 states and over 100 foreign countries.

Other favorite Valentine’s Day postmarks: Bliss, N.Y.; Juliette, Ga.; Romeo, Mich.; Sugar City, Colo.; Loving, N.M.; Valentine, Neb., Valentine, Texas; and lastly, Heart Butte, Mont., which doesn’t sound very romantic to me, although this year Heart Butte Postmistress Athena Mosxona is doing a heart in red ink with a ribbon postmark, which is pretty cool.

So there you have it — candy, flowers, Heart Butte and love. Give it some thought and choose wisely, men. Happy Valentine’s Day, just be careful.

I gotta go.