Whatever Day.

I am a non-believer of Parents' Day, Valentine's Day and what other Let'sSuckEmDry Day because it is just a bunch of crap to me. I love my parents and significant other to bits but I just hate the unnecessary fuss and commercial exploits of these Days.

When I was 7 or 8, I sat in the hallway on the cool terrazzo floor outside my room with the raised dark-lacquered wooden floor in the room as my table. I traced a page from Goldilocks & The Three Bears and some other princessy picture from another LadyBird fairy tale book to make a card for my brother and my mother for my brother's birthday and Mother's Day respectively. I think I abandoned it midway. That was possibly the only time I attempted to make a fuss for my mother on Mother's Day and possibly the first time I ever heard of it. I think that back then, no one came up with the idea to rip kids off big time yet.

When I was about 10 or 11, my mother told me to get something for my Dad for Father's Day. I think we got him some bedsheets or something practical like that because my Dad was then living alone like a bachelor. When I gave it to my Dad, he thundered (only because he has a super loud voice - no guesses where I got that from) something like "Thank you very much but I do not believe in all this Mat Salleh nonsense". I admit I was plenty crushed when he said that because it felt like he was rejecting the gift and rejecting me. He did not make any attempt to break it down gently to me, but that's just the way my Dad is. I never made a big deal about Father's Day again.

We never made a fuss about Mother's Day either. In one of my early years of employment, I went for a run with my good friend Jason at Lake Gardens on Mother's Day morning. The night before, I had taken off the old-fashioned screw-in diamond studs my mother had given me (which was from her ex-mother-in-law) and screwed them back on. After my run, Jason and I went for breakfast in Petaling Street and when I passed the florist, I decided to get my mom a dozen red roses wrapped in crepe paper for Mother's Day. I don't know what possessed me - it was a spontaneous thing. During the drive home, I launched into the habit of twirling with my right ear stud while at the traffic lights and to my horror, the stud was not there. Expletives shot out from my mouth in slow motion as I tried to look around me to find the missing stud. When I got home I searched the car, gave up, went upstairs, handed my mother the flowers and decided to hold back the info for a bit. She thanked my for the flowers but she wasn't exactly over the moon about it - and my mother is a very expressive person. I was dampened that my mother didn't show much appreciation but hey, that's the way it went. I figured that since she wasn't so hot about Mother's Day, she can't blame me for "ruining" it. So I told her about the missing earring and after an earful (pun intended), she just let it go. She didn't make me feel crap about it and for that I was and still am grateful.

Like everyone else, I am grateful to my parents for too many things. I am also very grateful that they thought me and subconsciously embedded in me that we don't need a Mother's Day and Father's Day to appreciate them or other people. Everyday can be Parent's Day or Spouse Day or whatever day you want it to be. Besides, we just get exploited. Even the Chinese restaurants are doing it with their set dinners etc. Birthdays and anniversaries, now those are special :)