What is it with women and decorative foliage ? Have a huge selection of intensely pigmented pollen stalks sent to a girl and it becomes a Thing That's Talked About Favourably, however should you be more practically-minded and get a couple of dozen heads of iceberg lettuce and a turnip or two sent, and you'll get nothing but a mouthful of abuse!

I must confess, my own track record with sending flowers isn't exactly illustrious – out of the few times I've done it one was well received, one assumed that I had an obsession with her (although my interest went about as far as me thinking it was worth the risk to nick 20 bucks from Mum's purse to buy the things, but not much further… Incidentally if you're reading this Mum, I think I owe you $20 from about 1990 – don't get mad, it was for the greater good), the big bunch of flowers I sent to the receptionist at the dentist I'd just started visiting and who I thought was unbelievably cute (so much so that I totally failed to notice the wedding ring she was quite obviously sporting), and one Valentine's Day bouquet would have gone better if I hadn't been in such a rush and had managed to scrawl more than “Happy V.D.” on the card. Ah well, you live and learn.

Oh and there was the Mothers' Day where my brother and I were a bit strapped for cash so we picked mum a big bunch of pink geraniums off a stobie pole up the road – it's the thought that counts, after all.

(Aside: a Stobie Pole is a South Australian invention – it's a power pole which is fireproof, rotproof and termiteproof, due to it being made out of a slab of cement strapped by 2 bits of train track. They're ugly as sin and make one hell of a dent in your car if you run into one. Many's the time you hear about motorists being killed by driving fast and getting airborne off a wombat, only to have their car wrapped around a stobie pole.)

I'm just not sure I follow the logic – I overheard a currently significant female in my life talking to another currently significant female in my life about the bouquet of flowers that had arrived for SF2's enjoyment, and the half of the conversation I heard (SF1) was, “I've put them in a vase… there's lilies, and roses, and [various other plant species]… no, no, there's no carnations… yep, it's huge”.

If big plants are the way to a girl's heart then why don't people give each other watermelons ?

Or romanescu.

2007-02-14 : Hallmark Cynicism 101: Part 2 in a series of bitching
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