Wednesday marks Singles Awareness Day, a holiday dedicated to a vain denial of other people's coupledom. SAD celebrators embrace a collective disdain for happy couples, refusing to acknowledge the pathetic commercial holiday couples created solely to rub their cuteness in our petulant faces.

Valentine's Day, eat your heart out. Around here we proudly say Happy SAD – except for my entire house as well as my family back home (just in time for SAD, to my delight). Hooray.

Those who can't celebrate SAD mistakenly believe that I care to hear about their plans for the day and the upturned corners of my mouth constitute a smile rather than a smug aura of transcendence.

That's right, I said it. We're better than you. A clear indication of this is the fact that I only found one greeting card at the grocery store celebrating the sentiments of SAD. We're so elite and progressive that we've yet to be commercialized.

Yet, we aren't appreciated.

Let me sum up my typical family gathering: "So … are you seeing anyone special?" asks every single relative, without fail. "That's okay, you'll find him!" they reassure me unsolicited, like I've yet to realize my life's goal of being the better half of an annoyingly shallow pair of future yuppies. I may shrug my shoulders and meritriciously show them my crossed fingers until they are satisfied and leave me alone, but I know better; misery loves company. Which brings me back to a common experience of college couples.

Every other day I hear girls complain to me about their boyfriends and how trapped and bored they feel and how he's a "d-bag" and vice versa. And then Feb. 14 rolls around and it's all chocolates and roses and those disgusting Eskimo kisses. Gimme a break (tall vodka tonic).

So many weekends listening to drunk girls howling and crying about this, that and his

other" has conditioned a negative response more predictable than the likes of Pavlov's best friends.

I'll bet there's a fair amount of people celebrating the day's traditional holiday who do so begrudgingly and solely at the behest of traditional expectation. I get to do whatever I want – and I don't have to pretend to be impressed by the cliché, last-minute bouquet of gas station roses.

I revel in the fact that my plus-one at social events is a flask and my most intimate relationship is with my coffee maker. Mr. Coffee may never brings me flowers or takes me to a romantic dinner at Rock Bottom (or "chez" Steve), but he'll also never demand to know where I am on the weekend or alienates me from my friends. I can forget my cell phone at home without fear of accusation. I'm not pressured to diet for two, (though I could party as such if I wanted).

So for all of you SAD folks who have been reassured that being single is as temporary as that cold that's going around – remind them that there's no Vitamin C in Jack Daniel's.

I hope I haven't been too harsh on you adorable couples. Not that I care about being a ball-buster, but just because you have it bad enough already.