One year after the infamous Boston Debacle, I learned to
laugh at Cupid again. All things
considered, I still think it's a fairly impressive turnaround time. This was my first Valentine's Day working for
Borders, where I had already begun to make new friends and pick up the
pieces. I was stuck on the night shift
with Jason - still one of mine and Rhea's nearest and dearest - and his equally
bleak view of all things snuggly that year made him a perfect partner in
crime. I'm not sure if I wore all black
that evening, but I'm fairly certain that he did. Together, we mixed wit, wisdom and whining
into an over the top joke-a-minute cocktail so acidic you just had to laugh, or
at least groan, with us provided you had any sort of soul at all.
That was a big "provided", at least as far as our
customers were concerned. Contrary to
whatever your favorite Hugh Grant movie may have led you to believe over the
years, there are no cute couples in the bookstore on Valentine's Night, and
there are very few highly eligible prospects (save for the staff, of course)
haunting the aisles, either. In the case
of the former, I was just fine: I was mending, sure, but hardly cured at that
point, and the lack of nuzzling to bear witness to was a relief. The latter were exactly what you'd expect:
overweight, disheveled, poorly laundered, sweatpants enthusiasts. Some of them were at least funny about their
losing lot in life, and it was from them that some small amount of hope could
be drawn: perhaps they'll meet someone who sees the good in 'em, has the
patience to scrub them up and give 'em a one way ticket to a more appealing
persona. The rest were just irascible -
thankfully, none of them really wanted much out of we, the staff. So we muttered under our breaths and back in
the stockroom, giving them names and back stories and, more often than not, fabricated
criminal records. We reveled in their
and our misery, puffing it up past the point of plausibility and taking a pin
to it at exactly the right moment. Cupid
may arrive dressed in black sometimes, but there's always light in humor.
I learned an important lesson that night, one applicable to
much more than just matters of the heart.
Everybody ends up somewhere they didn't really want to be at some point
in their life. When everything around
you is burnt, charred and left for dead, sometimes being the funniest lost soul
in Hell is the easiest way to cut to the front of the line for the next boat
back across the river Styx.
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