A PA Goodwill's new spin on Valentine's Day

Talk-Life-A-Pirate-Day notwithstanding, only a few holidays really have fans, mostly Christmas and Halloween. People don’t put light-up turkeys on their lawn for Thanksgiving or obsess over their July 4 outfit. And if you see any adults dressing up as Cupid in the next two weeks, please, please send me a picture before you contact the police.

Valentines Day is not universally loved: if you’re a romantic person it’s fun, but you don’t need a holiday to break out the lingerie. If you’re not a romantic it blows by you like Groundhog Day did. If you’re a cynic you start your eye-rolling campaign just about now, when the commercials start pushing red electronics as expressions of commitment (but they’re red! Get it?)

It seems to me that the VDay zeitgeist has mellowed into a more all-inclusive celebration of love in general – for your partner, your pals, your pets and anyone else that will put up with you. It’s a more MOR vibe that invites everyone to the party.

Some keen-eyed people in Pennsylvania, however, have found a clever way to turn the anti-aspect of VDay into a constructive, even cathartic tool for those whom love hasn’t treated so kindly. On Feb. 12, a PA Goodwill will have a "dump your ex's stuff" collection drive. Patriot-News reporter Lauren Boyer writes: “…behind the Valentine’s Day paper heart cutouts speckling the window of the Colonial Park Goodwill is the graveyard of relics from relationships past that inspired the event’s creation.

Mugs reading “You’re the best lover,” 25th-anniversary flower vases, and bride and groom Champagne glasses have made their way onto shelves.”

Ouch…if you’re a Goodwill shopper, though, you’ve seen it for yourself in the store before, just never framed as a therapeutic plan to reclaim your space, which is a brilliant spin. Ditching the relics of a relationship is usually a lugubrious and lonely business no matter how many friends are available to offer both cocktails and assessments of your ex that have to be handled with fire tongs. The idea of making it about the optimistic and graspable future rather than the pain-riddled past (as one of my friends put it when I had to get rid of the clothing of a loved one who had passed on “That’s like keeping a bag of sad,”) is a wise one, enough so that other second-hand stores are likely to follow suit. In two years it will be part of the culture, like sexy adult Halloween costumes and 24-hour runs of “A Christmas Story.”

It’s a weird thought that ceramic and plastic can outlast love. But maybe it’s a good reminder that if we all put a teeny bit more time into the people we have in our lives, romantic and platonic, they might last longer than our attachment that statuette that says “I love you thiiiiiiiiiiis much.”