Now of course, you might be saying to yourself, "What is this guy talking about? I am a person, as normal as the next person, and here I am, in love." Well, you are in the minority. Also, have you checked into the situation? Remember, everyone thought that little Jeffrey Dahmer was pretty normal, until he started talking about how he was in love, and before long he was eviscerating and eating his classmates.
This "love" that you speak of could be nothing more than a chemical imbalance in your brain which makes you think that you are in fact suffering from "love," when in reality you are merely suffering the unheralded yet nasty side-effects of non-drowsy cold medication. This "love" could also be athlete's foot. Or you may have been drinking, which would probably make the appearance of such "love" much more attractive than it was at about 9 p.m., when the presence of certain acute personality defects in your lover was more pronounced. The possibilities are endless.
But stick to your guns a lot of you may, and insist that love is real, and for good reason. When in love, one's guns can be darn sticky. But we don't even want to go into that! This is a family column. In fact, there is a decent chance that your entire family is reading this right now, which is why such comments as the one before are completely unacceptable. Texas from Mexico in some kind of war?? Come on! I haven't seen this kind of political incorrectness since Daniel Webster got up in mixed company, and, in a fit of unparalleled vulgarity, called Dartmouth a "small" school. (A lot of us now prefer the term "locationally challenged.")
But a lot of this begs the question. The question being: Why is love a myth? Part of the answer lies in what I have learned from reading the published reports of various Spaniards, who are the authorities when it comes to matters of the heart. Just look at their motto: "Cuando unos tienen corazones, no me gustan los tiburones." ("When some of them have hearts, I don't like sharks.") This proves my point about Spaniards once and for all, and that is, that you can attribute just about any type of quote to them, and it will always seem believable that they said it. Try this yourself.
Here, however, is what I learned about love. There are two fool-proof ways to tell that the object of your affections does not love you:
1) He/she says, "I do not love you," or some equivalent phrase. (For example, "I cannot look directly at you, because I am a nun." This works equally well for both sexes.)
2) He/she, in a clever attempt to throw you off, says, "I love you."
So there you have it. Are you going to argue with Spaniards? If you plan on it, you had also better plan on diverting their Armada into the English Channel, where strong winds will knock it off course and demoralize it.
The other reason that I publicly denounce love as a myth is because when you read any type of mythology, the presence of love is rampant. Take this excerpt from "The Odyssey:"
"And then Penelope said, 'regard me unto thy loins, Telemakhos, and maketh me a woman. Do unto me that rampant thing where you ..."
Well now! I think we see our point. Who could deny that love is a part of this myth? Not Odysseus, because he was off gallivanting about the globe, visiting witches and monsters and what not. He wasn't even there! Which might explain the tawdry and unexpected events that occur in Chapter Six.
Even in the Bible, which many consider to be a mythical book, people are begetting each other all over the place. If I remember correctly, Fred begot Mary, who begot Erasmus, who then begot Cain, who killed Able, but not before begetting another Fred, who forgot how to beget, but then remembered and begot Chauncey, who went into business selling baguettes.
Love -- a fictional societal menace since the earliest days of time, when it struck down on our planet with such force and destruction that it eventually caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Or were those asteroids? Hard to tell, really. It was all so long ago. It doesn't matter anyway -- dinosaurs were all a big myth, according to the Spaniards.
