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Photo from The symplegades

Anti-Valentine's Day silliness

Silly Love Songs

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We all know Valentine’s Day is on the way. Reds and pinks decorate, or besmirch, the landscape depending on how you view this annual holiday. The next Teen Coffee House offers an evening forum where you can feel free to discuss love: gained and lost, sought after and denied, never desired but received, or you may simply have no interest in love at all. Of course both dissenters and lovers of Valentine’s Day are invited to share your views. So join the pseudo-despair about sweetness (treats will be provided) and have fun! Anti-Valentine's Day will be celebrated this Monday, February 4 @ Bealeton Library from 7 to 9 p.m. during the Teen Coffee House. Bring nibbles while you watch videos, read poetry, and make anti-Valentine's Day surprises for your friends. Gloom and doom welcome, but not required. Check the calendar for other Teen Current Events coming up at Fauquier County Public Library.

To My Valentine
By Ogden Nash

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That's how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That's how you're love by me.

The Rain

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Ah, woe is me! For you high school students, do you remember Hamlet and his poor jilted Ophelia? For those of you still in middle school, the Shakespearean time draws nigh. The great bard's joys and sorrows approacheth. Back to Ophelia...as she drifted into sadness, she sang her sorrows of love. Ophelia played her own lute accompaniment and sang, ‘How should I your true love know’, in Hamlet 4.5.23. The opening words, and also a tune apparently sung at Drury Lane in the late 18th century, both relate to the 16th-century ballad ‘Walsingham’; in this, an old man, driven mad by lost love in his youth, asks a traveller from Walsingham if he or she has seen his true love. This information comes from Jeremy Barlow "‘How should I your true love know’" The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Read more about the Walsingham Ballad or try something lighter!

The Sniffle by Ogden Nash

In spite of her sniffle,
Isabel's chiffle.
Some girls with a sniffle
Would be weepy and tiffle;
They would look awful,
Like a rained-on waffle,
But Isabel's chiffle
In spite of her sniffle.
Her nose is more red
With a cold in her head,
But then, to be sure,
Her eyes are bluer.
Some girls with a snuffle,
Their tempers are uffle,
But when Isabel's snivelly
She's snivelly civilly,
And when she's snuffly
She's perfectly luffly.