Celebrating VD

Every year my friend Rachel would set up some sort of gathering so that we would all come together and celebrate Valentine's Day. I think that it started out as an anti-Valentine's dinner, for those of us that were single, but, as the years drew on, everyone started coupling up, and the 'anti' was dropped from the title. As the couples grew ever-more gropey, I decided that it would be best to shorten the title to VD, as it seemed apt. And then those damn scientists went and changed the D to an I, so it doesn't make sense anymore, but, at the time, there was still VD. This has gone off on a tangent, hasn't it?

The first V-Day that I spent with my group of friends, I was not seeing anyone. I had a lot of interest in seeing Ophelia, and Liz and I were...torturing each other emotionally, but I wasn't actually seeing anyone.

Rachel had been preparing things for about a week, and was in the process of making reservations at "a really nice restaurant," which was, in actuality, a relatively nice dive with a salad bar. I had decided that I didn't want to go, in part due to the fact that I wasn't all that interested in eating at Rachel's favourite local dive, but also because I didn't really want to acknowledge just how single I was going to be for the rest of my life. Naturally, this would soon become the cause of much drama. Well, some drama.

Rachel went ahead and made reservations at her favourite dive for the twenty or so people that were planning on showing up to the dinner, and I was prepared to have a quiet night alone at my place. And then my phone rang.

"So how are you getting there?" Ophelia asked. I then explained that I wasn't going, which drove Ophelia into a high-pitched whine. I had to debate with her for a while the reasons for which I wasn't going, and then had to convince her that she would still have a lot of fun without me there. She eventually agreed, albeit reluctantly, and hung up. I assumed that would be the end of the issue.

A little while later, the phone rings again. "Why aren't you going?" Jill asked. I once more explained my position, stating that I would rather just hang out and watch movies alone than go out and watch our friends lament their loneliness. "But it's going to be sooooo much fun!" she whined. My response was something along the lines of "we see these people every day, I think they can get through one evening without me."

Jill, who wasn't really one for phones, kept me on the line for a half hour, and eventually wore me down. Anything for a blonde, right?

Instead of getting fancy for a valentine's dinner, I decided to just show up in my civvies and let it be known that I really wasn't into this event at all. Ophelia and Jill had planned on driving there together, and, since they had worn me down in order to get me to go as well, they were picking me up. I heard a honking at the end of my driveway and looked out the window to see Jill waving from the passenger side of Ophelia's father's van.

Ophelia and Jill were sharing the passenger seat, each sitting precariously over either edge in an effort to stay seated, as Jill was far too proud a person to allow herself to sit on anyone's lap. I was directed to get into the back of the van...which had no seats. "We had to take them out for cleaning," Ophelia explained, though that really only brought up a slew of other questions that I really didn't want the answers to. My seat became a computer monitor that no longer worked, which meant that I was left to grip onto the front seats in an effort to keep my balance and not die.

When we arrived, we walked straight into Rachel, who turned on me immediately. "I thought you said you weren't coming!" It was my way to avoid conflict, which normally meant I would try to diffuse the situation with something like "you must have misheard me, I always planned to come," but Jill beat me to it with "we wasn't going to come. And then we made him." Fortunately, this made her more angry with Jill than with me, so...it kind of worked out.

Ever the dramatic, Rachel went about rampaging through the restaraunt, hauling a waitress out from behind the bar, and explaining that "some idiots need[ed] another table," and it was at this point that that waitress retreated to the kitchen and requested that one of the other servers deal with our table.

The rest of the night went smoothly, we all had a really good time, but no one hooked up. There were no Valentine's Day Miracles that I'm sure Ophelia was hoping for, and the food wasn't nearly as...terrible as I had expected. All in all, it was a good night.

A year later, when we would return to the same restaurant to repeat our VD Dinner, we would be asked never again to enter the premises. Good times.