Column: Codger loves you too

Codger had been looking forward to Valentine’s Day as the sweet spot in a sour season.

The national pastimes — elective politics and pro football — have left him reeling with their head-banging brutality. He wondered if some of the candidates would get concussions from their debates. The holiday celebrating the honeyed money pit concocted by Hallmark cards, Godiva chocolates and FTD Flowers was arriving just in time.

But wait a minute, thought Codger. What about those poor souls who don’t get cards, or get really hurtful ones? Like a certain Republican.

Grass is green
Roses are red
You are so mean
Go away, Ted.

Codger could only imagine how sad that might have made Valentine feel. That dude believed in love. According to myth and Google, there may actually have been a Valentinus, a priest martyred by the Romans in the third century A.D.

Valentine believed especially in church-sanctioned marital love. The Roman authorities, meanwhile, concerned lest young married soldiers might lose their nasty linebacker/politician edge, banned marriage for them. Valentine secretly married them anyway in Christian ceremonies.

The supervisor at the time, Emperor Claudius, felt threatened enough that sometime around 270, he sentenced Valentine to execution by beating, stoning and decapitation. So the lovefest began with a murder.

This might not be so out of character. After all, the most famous Valentine’s Day event ever was also a murder, the so-called Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929. Seven men were lined up against a garage wall in Chicago and executed by tommy guns. It was mobster Al Capone’s way of sending a hurtful message to a gangland rival, Bugs Moran.

Your gang’s been bumped
Off and your turf acquired.
I love how you’re trumped
And you are fired!

Valentine was canonized in 496 but several popes are said to have expressed skepticism at his story; in 1969 the Catholic Church removed his day from the official calendar. But it was way too late to head off this celebration of lovishness. It had solidified its lacy hold as an American institution, a gentle counterpoint to such other commercial carnivals as the Super Bowl and the presidential campaign. Valentine’s Day, at least, is a semi-private, peaceful occasion compared to the two reality TV spectaculars that demand we join together and scream at the screen.

Codger has been doing his share of screaming these days, but he has decided not to celebrate Valentine’s Day. First of all, because he is big-hearted but cheap, he would have to send too many cards, flowers and boxes of candy to objects of his affection, including the library, the fitness center, the fire and ambulance companies, Mashomack, Sylvester Manor, the Recycling Center and Wades Beach, not to mention all the wonderful people who put up with him, especially Codger’s wife, Crone.

Secondly, Codger thinks that the idea of love seems too important to be frittered away on a silly holiday that does nothing to counteract the mounting hatefulness around us. People say they love football and they love democracy, but how can they love them in their present violent, unloving forms?

Now past the Super Bowl, we can finally suspend lip service to the growing collective shame over watching young men obliterate their brains for our entertainment. We know that 20 years from now, some of those Bronco and Panther linemen won’t remember the game either, even if they want to. Nevertheless, too many of Codger’s friends excuse themselves by saying,

“It’s my guilty pleasure,” or “They’re grown-ups, they know what they are doing.” Maybe they do now but they didn’t when they started.

Codger is glad that Shelter Island fields no youth tackle football teams, because that’s where the damage begins. Grown-ups know by now that years of minor dings, thousands of little helmet hits that rattle the soft brain inside the hard skull, lead to early death and dementia for something like one-third of pro players and who knows how many high school and college players.

Codger thinks that any parent who lets a preteen play tackle football should be arrested for child abuse.

So, to love your kids
Pull them out of the huddle
Buy them books, songs and vids
And stay home and cuddle.

The brain-rattling squirmishes of current politics may be just as bad for kids, not to mention the rest of us. What if lying, personal attacks, dark money, bribery and stupidity really are winning combinations? Where do we go from there? Codger is glad that Shelter Island has so far avoided nasty, money-driven election campaigns, which seem to be creeping up the South Fork. What can we do?

Make a real effort to learn
To see right through the ruse,
Before you vote for Hillary or Bern,
Or Jeb, Marco, Ben, Christie or Cruz.