Valentine's Day and A Fist Fight

I told you I had a plan of going back through the month and a half I was missing, the month and half I was working on getting my graduate applications together. However, like all plans, they never quite go accordingly. This past weekend, Valentine’s weekend, which it has now become, it seems to me that no longer is there simply one day dedicated to love and Saint Valentine, but an entire weekend. The entire weekend must be romantic. I believe this to be true on the account that if Valentine’s Day falls on a Thursday then typically big plans of romance are pushed back to Saturday and since it has already been stretched out might as well milk the romance, the gifts, the excursions for a few days rather than one. This year is case and point. Valentine’s Day landed on a Sunday and most have to work the next day. So, most pushed the celebration of love and romance forward to Saturday and you even have to be at least a little romantic on Friday because, of course, the next day is Valentine’s Day, or what has become Valentine’s Day. And Sunday is actually Valentine’s Day. So, even if you celebrated the day of love the day before it is the real day on Sunday and you cannot help but find some way to be romantic on the real day. I do not write this all as it may look, I do not write it complaining, just letting everyone know how it works in my relationship and probably in many of yours.
We, me and Andrea, like I wrote, had our big celebration to the patron Saint Valentine on Saturday and the funny thing is until this year I had always thought it was just another Hallmark holiday introduced to get the general public to spend oozes of money on chocolates, flowers, cards, and the such, you know yourself and how much you end up spending on your loved one. Whether it be a single rose or a diamond encrusted bracelet it does not matter, it was the point I thought we were celebrating for no good reason, which had me a little upset. Come to find out there is a good reason to be celebrating your love with the one you love.
Now is when you are going to get a history lesson you probably already know, but I have to share because I didn’t know it and had been under the assumption all my money for cards, candy, and roses were forced upon me by the commercialization of the world. Well here I go, whether you like it or not. It is important for me to share this information I found out because it meant a lot to me and how I now view Valentine's Day and I hope you who have not know the reason for Valentine's Day will take the story to heart and next year plan something extra special for all the people you love. It does not have to be a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a wife, or a husband. Ican be a parent, a friend, a child.
This is story I heard about the creation of Valentine's Day. I guess in the old day's of the Roman Empire the Roman Emporor was so concerned with his military being the most powerful in the world he decided to forbid marriages, he outlawed love. He wanted men to focus all their attention on their military pursuits. Thus, the Roman Empires conquering of the world. Pretty sad, huh? However, the was a man, a Saint, a Saint Valentine, who refused to dismiss love and he married people through out the Roman Empire despite the conquences it could mean to himself, love for him conquered all. The conquences for Saint Valentine in the end were grave, he was put to death. He gave his life for love and I hope next Valentine's Day when you agonize over why you have spending a single day dedicating yourselves to love remember this man who dedicated, who gave his life, the ultimate sacrifice for love.
Well without anymore of my shenaniganes or preaching let me get into the story of Andrea and my Valentine's Day. I am not going to share the Friday before or the Sunday after although we did attempt to be romantic, but I am going to tell of the day we actually dedicated to our love together.
It is kind of funny, we put all the plans for the day together the morning of that Saturday. Neither of use actually knew exactly what to do for Valentine's Day here in the Czech Republic, we had scoured the Internet for ideas of romantic things to do in Prague, like a romantic dinner or something of that sort, but we came up empty handed. We are poor teachers and of the Valentine's Day packages we could find on the Internet were things like 5-course dinners, which we could not even dream of affording right now. The search of the something to do seemed endless with negative result after negative result.
Luckily though, on the very morning of Saturday, I just said enough with this all. Enough with searching for the ideal plan. I asked Andrea what she thought about just going into Prague and getting massages. She liked it, but was a little upset because I had ruined her Valentine's present to me. She had already written out a coupon for me for a massage. Nevertheless, it was something different, something fun we could do together. I had never my life got a professional massage and Andrea is never one to pass up a massage. So, I immediately jumped on the phone and made each of us an appointment to get a Thai massage in Prague. This is something neither of us had ever done, a Thai massage but they are very popular here in the Czech Republic. So, we had our appointment for a message and thanks to my parents we had a gift certificate to eat lunch after our massages at one of the most extraordinary restaurants in Prague, The Cafe Louvre. Albert Einstein had actually sat in that very same cafe. Sorry, but that fact just astonishes me. We, also, made plans to go see the new movie, Valentine's Day, what movie could be better to see when you are celebrating Valentine's Day.
Let me start with the Thai Massage, not quite what I expected. I had always imagined a massage as a relaxing time when a women, sorry I just don't think I could even get a massage from a man, would lightly massage my legs, arms, back, and shoulders. This is not quite exactly what Thai massage is all about. Thai massage is about working your pressure points to relieve tension. So, with my idea of what I thought was going to be a relaxing massage I changed into the outfit the massage parlor, I can’t think of a better way to name it, gave me. The two women lay Andrea and I down next to each other on these mats on the ground; it was nice being able to have these side by side massages. Lying next to each other as we each reached our most relaxed states, sounds nice huh? However, like I wrote, Thai Massages are not quite, actually not anywhere near what would be considered a typical massage. As my sweet Thai women asked if I had had any pains lately I told her my lower back gets painful. She nodded. I thought it was going to be heaven; she was going to just rub my lower back into ecstasy. She started on my legs. Okay, just a little warm-up to my back I thought. I was wrong, and I was even more wrong in not noticing how muscular her tiny hands were. As I lay face up she worked on my legs, loosen them up for maybe five minutes. Then she told me to flip over. My back, she was finally going to start rubbing my back, relieving the tension. I was right and I was wrong. I was right that she was going to start her work on relieving the tension in my back, but I was dead wrong in how she was going to do it. You see, I guess, in your calves you possess pressure points which help cure back pain and this is where this tiny Thai woman with freakishly strong hands worked. And she did not let up. I was thinking the entire 30 minutes she “massaged” my calves she was putting me through some type of ancient Thai torture. She seemed to be trying to push my limits of pain as far as she could to see if I would yell out of mercy.
I am not writing this to brag or to be arrogant in any way, but I do have rather large calf muscles and this woman, it seemed, had a goal of reaching as far and with the most pressure possible underneath these calf muscles. I was in excoriating pain through the entire time she worked on my calf muscles and what made it worse was I had asked her to work on my sore back. What the hell was she doing? Did she ask where I was in pain just to find out what other body parts she could put into pain? The entire time, while she pressured my calves I had to close my eyes, grit my teeth, and breathe deeply. See, being a man, how could I tell this tiny Thai woman she was hurting me, I had to just grin and bear it as they say.
She finished digging into my calves and I had thought I found relief. Not quite. This is when this little woman decided it was time to try to bend me in every possible position I could not. I am somewhat flexible, but once again it was a matter of her proving I could endure more. This did lead to one of the funny occurrences during the massage. She decided, and I apologize if the description isn’t completely full, but like I said, she decided to sit on the back of my thighs as I was still lying face down and still recovering from the agony coursing through my calves. While sitting on my thighs she grabbed my feet and pulled them with all her might, and she had a lot of might, toward my head, over her shoulders. This is where it became funny. Every time she would pull, my pants I had been provided would slip a little lower on my butt. She would laugh and then very shyly try to pull them back up just a little. She pulled again, they slipped a little further down, she laughed a little harder, and she once again shyly pulled them back up again. Finally, she gave one last tug at my feet and my pants came nearly all the way off my butt. I did still have underwear on, but this shy little woman broke out in hysterics. She said to me, “Okay.” And she crawled off my thighs allowing me to pull my pants up. I have never heard someone find so much humor in a man’s pants slipping down. It was great and it made me forget about the pain in my calves.
The second funny part to me came when she asked me to flip over. Once again I was lying on my back and she straddled my thighs again. She was about to begin working on the pressure points in my stomach. She asked me, “Do you have any stomach ulcers?” I did not understand her thick accent, “Excuse me?” I replied. “Stomach ulcers?” She repeated. Still I had no idea really what she said, but for some reason I thought she might have said something else and I responded, “No, no, I do not have any stomach cancer.” She just laughed at me and got to work. I didn’t occur to me what she had actually said until she was halfway through pushing down on my stomach as hard as she could. I guess all that pressure probably would not have been good if I had any ulcers or any cancer in my stomach. Anyway to finish off the actual description of the massage, I have to say I cannot remember a time when I was in such pain, and she had not once touched my back. Here’s the kicker though. I have not had even a hint of back pain since I went to the massage and that was almost two weeks ago.
Anyway, walking over to the restaurant from the massage parlor, I never felt better. I had never been a big believer on pressure points and the Eastern philosophy of medical treatment, but this one massage has removed all my doubts. So, any of you reading, with back pain, neck pain, and type of pain, try it. I know a lot of people like chiropractors, but just grab your Yellow Pages and find yourself a Thai massage. That is my advice.
Lunch was pleasant, the food was nothing special, but the atmosphere is something no one could ask for more of. I have been to that café on several occasions now and every time I wonder, am I sitting where Einstein once sat and I feel just a tad bit smarter.
Lunch was quick and we had to make it to the mall before the movie. See in the Czech Republic it isn’t the same as it is in the U.S., you don’t just go to the theater, get your tickets, and hope to find the best seats available. You go online find the movie you want to see and then you reserve your assigned seats. That’s right; they have assigned seating in movie theaters. So, we took the Metro to the shopping center, which was a stone’s throw from the movie theater. Andrea went shopping and I went to stand in the enormous line to get our reserved seats. I guess going to movies for Valentine’s Day is just as big a tradition as it is in the U.S. Andrea shopped around for a bit, I got the tickets, and then went back to get her. And I hope you have not stopped reading yet because this is the climax. This is the part of the story I could wait to share.
We took our assigned seats, were watching the movie, not the best movie, but I can’t say don’t go see it because I think for some it may be entertaining. I know Andrea liked it. The entertainment for me, which I do have to say is sad, did not come from the movie. About midway through the movie all about love we started to hear a couple of people bickering, two women. As I looked over, suddenly one woman was throwing some of the most vicious punches into the other woman’s head. Surprisingly enough neither of the men who were with the woman were doing anything. It was almost as if nothing was going on between them. It was almost like the movie was too good to let their eyes be distracted by this one woman pounding upon the other. After about 30-40 seconds, which is a long time when someone is punching you in the head, the men stepped in. I swear we were in the movie, Valentine’s Day, we were not seeing some movie with any type of violence. I was astonished. The man of the woman who had been getting her head punched in grabbed her and led her out of the theater. They were followed by the woman applying the punches and the man associated with the assailant followed after about another minute or so. I guess he was too into the movie. As they finally left the theater exploded into cheers. I am pretty sure they were cheering because the distraction was gone, but they could have been applauding the sight of female boxing match.
Regardless, once the two couples had exited the theater a couple with horrible assigned seats in the row got up and took the vacated seats. This you would think was a good idea. Get yourself better seats. Not really though. About five minutes later the woman who had done the beating and the man she was with reentered the theater. To my surprise they were English-speaking. Not sure if they were American, I couldn’t make out the accent when the outraged woman shouted at the couple who had moved into their seats, and I apologize for sharing this language, but it must be shared to give you a full idea of the experience, “What? We’re not allowed to watch the fucking movie.”
I can confidently say I have been to a great many movie, all types of movies, comedies, romances, thrillers, dramas, but I have never seen anything like I saw. It was one of the strangest things I have seen while I have been in Europe and that is saying a lot.
That story I cannot top. So, I am going to finish this off really quickly. We rushed to the Metro, took the Metro to the Bus Station, took the bus back to Andrea’s town, and then spent Sunday romantically watching movies in bed. I happy to say, on Sunday, there was not one first fight during any of the movies we watched.
And I am sorry, but I just have to say this again. A female fist fight during a movie about love, amazing.