’Tis the season.
Hide under the bed and pull up the covers, New Yorkers. A day I dread more than pedestrian malls, the neighbors’ brats or a Madonna concert is creeping up fast.
The season of crisis begins roughly around Christmas, and it ends with a gigantic stake in the heart tomorrow, Feb. 14. That’s when women celebrate, and men develop temporary brain damage.
For this is the day set aside to observe a manufactured holiday replete with unrealistic expectations and crushing disappointments. It’s dedicated to wilting flowers, stale chocolates and flimsy undergarments one shouldn’t touch without a vaccination.
I’m talking about Valentine’s Day.
According to a national survey, and tons of anecdotal evidence, the period that starts in December and winds up with a crash on the Big V Day, ostensibly the most romantic on the calendar, makes otherwise sensible adults categorically insane.
Maybe it’s the pressure. Or the hand-rolled chocolates, slinky lingerie and enough flowers to fill a mausoleum that my friend Sarah inflicted on her spouse one Valentine’s Day — just in time for him to serve her with divorce papers and run off with a Brazilian waxing specialist.
“I was a maniac,” she confessed between curses.
Well, a new title has been bestowed on the period that, thankfully, ends day after tomorrow:
National Breakup Season.
From Seal and Heidi Klum to Katy Perry and Russell Brand, couples have chosen the dead of winter to break each other’s hearts. From Kobe and Vanessa Bryant to Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor Swift to famous and anonymous pairs too numerous to name in one breath, this time of year is hell on the heart.
While a poor law student, my pal Maddie dated a rich guy who chose Valentine’s Day to passive-aggressively call it quits.
“He said he’d like to cook me dinner and asked if I could pick up some groceries. The list was insane — raspberries, fresh herbs. In February! The bill was $90,” said Maddie. That wasn’t the worst part.
“When he came over to cook the food, he criticized my dull knives. He never offered to pay for the groceries or even split them.” Then came the death blow.
“After we had dinner, he said, ‘Let’s just sit here and hug.’ That was our last date.”
It’s not only women getting the boot. Josh Opperman was living with his sweetheart when he came home one day to an empty Manhattan apartment. The only thing left was the engagement ring that had cost Josh upward of 10 grand. He was devastated.
Even more so when he learned he could sell the ring for only up to 35 percent of the purchase price. But the marketing exec got his revenge.
Five years ago, he started I Do Now I Don’t with his sister Mara, a Web site that hooks up people who’ve been jilted with those who want to buy diamonds, at much better prices than one finds at pawnshops or jewelry stores. Then, a funny thing happened.
Josh noticed that his business nearly doubles every year at this time. Normally, he brokers about 100 ring sales a month. But from December through mid-February, it’s closer to 200 — with 600 to 800 poor zhlubs listing their rings, twice the number offered in spring, summer and fall.
“It’s the pressure of Valentine’s Day,” said Josh, now married with a baby. “Is this the person I want to spend Valentine’s Day with?”
“Valentine’s Day is a day of judgment,’’ said Dr. Bonnie Eaker Weil, a Manhattan psychotherapist and author of “Make Up, Don’t Break Up.”
While men tend to hang in through the holidays, they look for the exits as V Day approaches.
“They think, ‘Is this the person I want to spend my life with?’ ” said Dr. Weil.
A word of advice, guys: Don’t propose marriage on Christmas, Kwanzaa or your gal’s birthday. If you can’t wait until Feb. 15, you may be screwed.
That’s because most courts have ruled that engagement rings presented on holidays or birthdays don’t have to be returned should you change your mind about the wedding after meeting the dental hygienist of your dreams.
Me? My husband proposed on Valentine’s Day.
I haven’t tried to give the ring back.
Hizzoner sugar smacked
It’s Daddy Pitt vs. Nanny Bloomberg.
As the mayor wages war on sugary sodas, Brad Pitt, well-known dad of six, confesses that he uses sweetened, caffeinated beverages to pep up his brood.
“Listen, I admit there’s times, like, ‘We gotta get up! Get up! Here’s your shoes. Here’s your shoes. Drink this Coke. Drink this Coca-Cola. Drink it all. Right now! Drink it! Drink it! Drink it!’ Just so we could get ’em up and going,” the Hollywood hunk said on “Inside the Actor’s Studio.”
Bloomberg is in the midst of a pop scandal. A city Health Department poster plastered in the subway features a photo of a one-legged man who, the ad suggests, lost the limb to diabetes caused by serial Big Gulps. Wrong! The man actually has two legs. The pic was Photoshopped.
And he doesn’t suffer from chronic disease.
This provoked US Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) to introduce the Protecting Foods and Beverages from Government Attack Act of 2012.
It would ban the use of federal funds, some of which were used for the New York campaign, to pay for ads that scare Americans away from Sprite.
In this carbonated slugfest, there’s no contest — Brad wins!
So drink up. In moderation.
Trial & big error in student-hate case
Brooklyn teacher Christine Rubino wrote on Facebook about her computer-literate fifth-grade students: “I HATE THEIR GUTS! They are all the devils spawn!’’ A day after a Harlem girl drowned on a class trip, Rubino wrote that she wouldn’t throw a life preserver to dying children.
Rubino was fired. No, wait! Idiot Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe reinstated her, saying Rubino meant no harm. This case highlights the urgent need to make it easier for the school system to get rid of rotten apples.
But what about judges?
City’s god-awful move
Dozens of churches yesterday were served eviction notices from city schools where they’ve long held after-hours prayer services.
This, in an education system that mandates teaching sixth-graders the joys of anal and oral sex!
The state Senate last week passed a bill to save the churches, but the measure won’t get through the Assembly, said Speaker Sheldon Silver, because it would open school doors to the likes of the Ku Klux Klan.
Silver said he would create another bill to save religion, minus the bigotry.
There’s not a moment to lose.
A ‘miracle’ that doesn’t fly
The military is cracking down on God.
Caving to complaints from an atheist group, the US Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office banned a logo containing a Latin phrase that translates to “Doing God’s work with other people’s money.’’ The offensive words were changed to read, “Doing miracles with other people’s money.’’
They say there are no atheists in foxholes.
Tell that to pilots of military planes.