There is nothing more delusional than the notion of being in love. With your brain chemistry altered, which is what scientists say love actually is, people end up doing stupid things. Topping the list is buying into this purely capitalistic-driven corporate scheme of spending good money on asinine things such as flowers, jewellery, helium balloons, nauseous heart-shaped candy, cakes and chocolates. If love is supposed to be for keeps, till death do us part and happy-ever-after endings, then why have one single day to celebrate? Why 24 hours? It’s very complex.
But not as complex as the demographic division that takes place on Valentine’s Day: the most predominant herd being the ‘Mush Lovers’ who are easily recognised by their goofy I’m-so-head-over-heels in love look; then there are the ‘Regulars’, who have been married for ten years or divorced thrice and just go through the notions of being in love and live off the fumes from the dying embers of their first Valentine’s Day where they couldn’t help but gaze into each other’s eyes but now prefer to look anywhere else except there. Then comes the ‘Desperados’ who hook up on the first of February just so they wouldn’t have to be alone on Valentine’s Day and then strangely enough the magic fizzles off like a bottle of Schweppes that has been left open overnight. At the other end of the spectrum are the ‘Mush Haters’, who absolutely abhor all the above types and whose single biggest fear is becoming one of “them”.
Like vampires recoiling from a hint of daylight, the Mush Haters or the Anti Vals armour themselves from being struck by Cupid’s lethal, love-tipped arrows. This is done by avoiding anything that remotely resembles love for more than 30 minutes; boycotting all films, novels, TV series and any form of media that falls under the category of romance; not having any couple friends, attending weddings alone; and never being with the same person for more than three weeks.
Mush Haters are a close-knit club and the membership is strict, the reasons for your allegiance are unnecessary, but abiding by the cardinal rule is imperative — love is a festering disease that thou shall never contract. Having taken the oath, here are a few ways to ensure you become a true-blue Mush Hater and celebrate Anti Valentine’s Day.
• Send bitter messages coated in hate and laced with a hint of nastiness — these messages can go out to all the Mush Lovers in your phone book as well as to all your ex-boyfriends, girlfriends, wives and husbands, colleagues, bosses or even your chirpy doorman.
• If sending messages isn’t enough, gift a bouquet of black balloons and black roses to all the people who think love is a wonderful thing. You can even place a special order of broken heart-shaped cakes and send those to your ex-partner.
• Throw an Anti-Valentine’s Day party for all your single friends, where you play non-love songs, serve crumbled heart-shaped cookies, talk about your worst moments in a relationship, trample over red roses and play break-up scrabble, where the only words you are allowed to use are mean names for ex-partners and antonyms for love and romance.
• Set up a street stall selling mugs that say stuff like, ‘You are the biggest loser I’ve ever been with; ‘The king of jerks’, ‘Nightmare come true’, ‘You belong on a fat farm’, ‘Love stinks’, ‘Cupid is stupid’, ‘Happy fake love day’.
• Hire a movie house or a preview theatre and screen movies like The Break-Up, War of the Roses and Fatal Attraction that reaffirm the fact that love is indeed blind.
• Order a hundred copies of the Anti-Valentine’s Day Handbook on Amazon and gift it to all your fellow Mush Haters.
• Get onto facebook and join the numerous anti-valentine’s groups and you may even find an Anti-Valentine’s Day party being organised in your neighbourhood.
Having said all this, be warned that you can wrap your heart in barbed wire, lock it in a box, weighed down by rocks and throw the key into the deepest part of the ocean, but being there is no guarantee against this crazy little thing called love.
