Love American Style

Ah, the ides of February! Amidst the bitterly cold weather, the sight of big corporations pretending to care about Black History, and the sounds of idiots complaining about The Superbowl halftime show comes a day for us to show our romantic love to each other in the most American way possible: By buying a load of cheap, plastic garbage from a drug store on the way home from work!

“My husband isn't the most emotionally available guy,” says Joan Packard, schoolteacher, “but when I see him come in that door with a cellophane-wrapped, heart-shaped box of Reese's minis I know he really, really loves me!”

“Nothing says ‘I love that I get to spend the rest of my life with you’,” says Candice Spencer, CPA, “quite like an animal stuffie holding a mylar balloon that says ‘im urs’.”

“My husband is far too busy to think up the words to describe how much he loves me,” says Betty Grant, realtor, “which is why it's so great that the people at Hallmark have already thought of those words for him! And I know he means them by the way he writes ‘Jim’ at the end of the poem printed on it with a pen he also just bought at CVS according to the receipt he left inside the card. ‘Jim’ is my husband's name, he wrote it there so I would know it was from him. So sweet!”

Yes, Valentine's Day really is the Black Friday of drug stores such as CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, or whatever still exists at the time you're reading this. It's even said that they make enough money during this period that they could keep the pharmacy fully-staffed the entire rest of the year (though they won't)!

“Oh, the CVS is a lifesaver!” says Len Peters, a retiree currently in a long checkout line. “I came in to get a glasses repair kit, I lost the tiny screw for my glasses you see, and saw all the Valentine's Day merch out and was like ‘Oh man, is that coming up!? I better get something for Veronica!’. Thanks, CVS!”

“Some people buy expensive jewelry or a dozen roses for Valentine's Day,” says CVS customer Paul Davis, car salesman. “But I mean, if you wanna get her something expensive, for what eggs cost these days, you can just get her a doz–”

No, nope, we're not doing egg jokes here. Move along, Paul.

“This place is great,” says Dylan Wattley, movie theater usher. “I can get something real quick for my girlfriend, some snacks for later, and some of those crappy, not-fun toys for my niece’s birthday that I also forgot about until I came in here for cigarettes. Also, did you know they stopped selling cigarettes here? That's messed up.”

It's a pharmacy, bro, not a harmacy. But ignore the food selection so that joke’ll work.

So this Valentine's Day, show your most significant of others that you care by getting them something disappointing on the way home; whether it be an overpriced greeting card that articulates thoughts you've never had, a cheaply made knickknack to collect dust for a few weeks before it ends up in a landfill, or an evening out with you at Chili's. Just make sure you get it from a place run by a large corporation and pay way more than it's actually worth. That's how we show love here in America!