Winter Olympics, NASCAR, and Red Wings: the Perfect Valentine's Day

This weekend my wife and I are enjoying a Perfect Storm of Really Cool Stuff.

On Friday the 2010 Winter Olympics* kicked off in Vancouver, British Columbia. There was a terrific Opening Ceremony highlighted by some teams marching in with hundreds of happy skiers and skaters waving at the crowd, while other teams were made up of a single athlete carrying a flag and followed by fifteen old bald government guys.

Canada, the host country, has been sounding uncharacteristically pugnacious about the competition this time around, but I'm pretty sure I saw the Canadian curlers using their brooms on the way into the stadium to tidy up a bit.

On Monday we will celebrate President's Day, a time when all Americans set aside a few hours to reflect on the accomplishments of some of our nation's most revered leaders, and to buy mattresses.

Sandwiched in between, on Saturday, my friend scored us front-row tickets to take our wives to see the Detroit Red Wings. This was the last game before the NHL players take off to Vancouver, where they will spend a couple of weeks knocking each others teeth out in Olympic competition.

The neatest moment of the evening came when my son sent my cell phone a picture from his cell phone of the TV screen where he was watching the game. It clearly showed my wife, my friend, his wife, and me standing up in our seats directly behind the visitor's bench. The others were cheering whatever was happening on the ice, and I was totally engrossed in sending my son a text message about how cool it was that I could just about read the coach's clipboard.

Today promises to be a really fun-packed day. For one thing, this is the Chinese New Year, the biggest holiday of all for Chinese people, tigers (we're kicking off the Year of the Tiger) and firecracker salesmen.

Today also marks the official start of the new NASCAR season with the Daytona 500, featuring driver interviews along the lines of, "Well, that there number 2 Ex-Lax Toyota was runnin' real good for us today, until we got a recall notice right after the last restart, on account of the rear axle broke and all the cup holders blowed up."

Oh yeah - and it's also Valentine's Day.

Valentines Day is named after Saint Valentine, a Christian priest who lived (briefly) in third century Rome.  According to the legend, when Emperor Claudius II was unsuccessful at beating Valentine to death with a club, he had him beheaded in the temple of Hallmark, the pagan God of Greeting Cards and Really Expensive Trinkets.

Eleven hundred years later, Geoffrey Chaucer, often referred to as the "Father of English Literature 101," apparently got wind of this deeply romantic story. Inspired, he penned a limerick for his wife, picked up a Whittemanne's Samplerre and some pansies on his way home from catching the afternoon beheadings at The Tower of London, and Valentine's Day as we know it was born.

Now every man who has been married for more than a couple of years knows that his near-term connubial happiness depends on coming up with something more interesting for his lady on February 14 than a heart-shaped box of glop-filled chocolates. Unfortunately, most of us struggle with the idea that the gals never really respond all that well to practical stuff, like a gift set of little sandpaper pads they can use to grind the hair off their legs - even though the lady in the ad says that those things are the "most popular personal grooming product in Europe."

This Valentine's Day I am the luckiest man on the planet. My wife is a fanatic Red Wings fan, so the game last night scored big points, despite the fact that I can't take credit for anything beyond having the coolest friend ever and wearing a sweater that is easy to spot on television. She also loves NASCAR so much that it was her idea to go to a Winston Cup race at Michigan International Speedway on the first day of our honeymoon. And she is nearly as much of an Olympics junkie as I am. She will even watch live coverage of the Biathlon with me - for a while.

So all I've really needed to be a hero around our house this weekend has been a Valentine card and my natural mastery of the television DVR remote control. Maybe tomorrow I'll go for husbandly immortality and hit the mattress sales.

*The joy of the Olympic Games has been sadly overshadowed by the tragic training death of Georgia luger Nodar Kumaritashvili. The one consolation I can find is that this young man achieved a goal in his short life that only a select few people in all the world have achieved - he was an Olympian. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends and fellow athletes.

Copyright © 2010, Michael Ball  

What I've Learned So Far... by Mike Ball is a syndicated weekly feature. If you enjoy this work, please contact your local newspaper's editors, give them a link to What I've Learned So Far... and ask them to carry it.