Valentines Day has come and gone for another year and while the loveless may breathe a sigh of relief, a number of businesses are panting from exhaustion – greeting card companies, florists and restaurants, to give just a few examples. Next to Mother’s Day, Valentines is the single biggest day of the year for the restaurant industry.
These days the occasion also spawns the predictable cottage industries in cyberspace. Take
www.savemyass.com for example. It's a service that will, for a fee, record the birthdays, anniversaries, and other special occasions of all your significant others and make sure your loved ones receive the required card, floral bouquet, singing telegram, or whatever … complete with a sincere piece of thoughtful prose from “you�.
For this company, the biggest membership sign up day is not Valentines, but the day AFTER, and for reasons you can probably imagine. Yet even though the two twentysomething guys who created this site insist that women don’t mind if they discover they are actually being wooed by a computerized data bank, their customers would be foolish to believe them. Gentlemen, let me assure you: if she finds out, you are toast. And God forbid if their computers contact a virus or suffer from a human inputting error. Depending on how many valentines you have registered, you could be in even worse trouble because on the Internet, women can indeed find out you are a dog.
Still another swinging bachelor pad site advises two-timers on how to navigate though the minefield that is Valentines Day. One pointer: “make dinner reservations with one sweetie, and tell the other that only the best is good enough for her, but since all the really great restaurants are booked for dinner, you’ve reserved a romantic table a deux for lunch instead." This suggestion also comes with a reminder not to eat for two days beforehand and not to wear pants with a snug waistband. The truly daring may try to make both reservations in the same restaurant, but these guys are probably also professional Grand Prix racers or bullfighters.
Most men are just more predictable when it comes to romance. Visiting one of my favourite flower stalls I asked the vendor if he was ready for the onslaught of procrastinating males who would undoubtedly charge his stand on their way home from work. “Actually,� he said. “At the end of the day, my largest group of customers are single women buying bouquets for themselves. They always say it is for their mother you know, but from the looks on their faces ….
you can just TELL.�
