The Theory of Relationship Relativity-redux

After years of devoted research, I’ve made a shocking discovery about relationships.  Love is a mathematical formula.

Sure, this flies in the face of thousands of romantics from the past.  Shakespeare would reject the theory outright.  Burns would chase me through the streets with a red rose (and a stick).  And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Dr. Ruth put out a contract on me.  But it’s true.

I finally came to this conclusion after closely looking at the relationships of movie stars.  After all, aren’t they the modern paradigm of love?  Gossip magazines spend thousands of dollars to snap wedding pictures of Posh Spice and her soccer man.  Everyone at work gathers around the coffee pot to discuss Madonna’s latest flame.  So they are perfect laboratory love rats, no offense to any rats out there.

The formula is this:

LOVE= amount of time with a person  x  the qualities you like about the person

        ÷ those pet peeves that drive you crazy

Let me give you an example.  Mr. Smith has loved his high school sweetheart for 10 years.  Ms. Brown served on the student council and lead the cheers at football games and looks incredible in a tight Angora sweater.  However, she snaps her chewing gum, hates to cook, cleans her house once every decade and wears perfume from K-Mart.

For the most part, the qualities and pet peeves are fairly even.  However, because of the length of time they have been dating, they will enter relationship heaven.

Example B.  Gail has dated Roger for close to a year now.  He works for the Shark, Curmudgeon and Bitter law firm as a junior partner, often gets confused for Brad Pitt and owns stock in IBM, Exxon and Ben & Jerry’s.  However, she’s recently learned that his favorite pastime is nude, Jell-O wrestling, munches on a whole onion (uncooked) at lunch and still thinks that “Porky’s” is the best movie ever produced.  This relationship will be joining the Titanic in no time at all.  Because the time factor is so short, and the nasty quirks are slightly stronger than the qualities, they don’t stand a chance.

How did this formula come about with the help of movie stars?  Well, look at the examples.  Bogart and Bacall spent a lot of time together on the sets of several movies.  A lot of close time together.  They both were beautiful, charming and provocative people.  Negative qualities were slight and undiscovered.  Their relationship was so mathematically predictable, even a French Lit major could solve the equation.

This formula gets repeated over and over with modern stars with incredible frequency.  Almost every week you can read in one of the paragons of journalistic reportage, like The Enquirer, about two hot stars falling into a relationship after spending many arduous months together on a film.  The time factor is so strong they can’t resist each other.

Of course, these relationships also never work out.  And it’s mathematical.  After a year of marriage/shacking up, the negative qualities start to appear and grow.  Soon they quickly outweigh time and positive qualities.  A break-up follows to the delight of readers everywhere.  This wouldn’t happen with Mr. Smith and Ms. Brown because the time factor has become so large the pet peeves could never overcome it.  There could almost be an argument made that to save the relationship, for the first few years you should try to avoid learning anything bad about your mate.  Build up that quality time so that the math works out.

As with all math formulas there will be countless tests to validate it.  So go ahead and test it to your heart’s (and relationship’s) content.  Plug in your parents.  Try out your sister and that stupid Marine she met at Mardi Gras.  And dare you?  Sure, be brave.  Plug your own relationship into the formula.  

The numbers don’t lie. 

 

Ahh, James Thurber

 

Eyes Up Here

It’s a classic line on all TV comedies, brought about by a buxom female standing in front of a man.  “Hey, eyes up here, buster!” She says as she looks sternly up at the guy. The implication being that he is looking at her breasts and not into her eyes.

It draws a big laugh because usually the guy isn’t looking where she thinks. He’s just some hapless guy or foil to the actress. When the scene unfolds, he’ll look stunned that she even thought that and mumble something incoherent as he scrambles off screen.

This happens in the regular world too. Perhaps without the woman being so aggressive or the guy being meek, but it happens regularly.

The problem though is that although the male may like the female form, he’s not really focusing on the breasts, he’s just looking downward. That’s right, the male is often taller than the female and so is looking down.

Now, I like tall women, and sometimes even fantasize about running into a gorgeous Amazon warrior who will ride up to me on her stallion and grab me by the collar and take me back to her lair.

However, most of my life I’ve gone out with, worked with or just hung around with females who were shorter. So, I looked down. No, not in disdain, but physically looked down at her (mainly into her eyes).

In the US, the average height of men is 5 feet 9 inches, while the average for women is 5 feet 4 inches.

In other words, it’s not uncommon for men to be looking down when talking to women. So do men’s eyes wander farther down? Possibly.  So do women hope that men are looking down there? That could also be possible. 

 

Ahhh, James Thurber

 

The Nail in the Road Theory

Only a few short months ago I learned I had a slow leak in one of my car's tires. I used the usual tire fix in a can, but it only held a few days. When I took it in to have the tire fixed ($10) we discovered there was a nail in the tread.

In the old days, I would have ranted about drug addled, crazy teenagers driving around and throwing out nails and screws—along with empty beer bottles. However, except for the last item, I have come to realize they are not to blame.

It's carpenters, construction workers, handymen, etc.

Here's how all those screws, nails and bolts end up in the street—and eventually in our tires. All those handymen and such drive around in pickup trucks, both for the job and to impress the females. Most Don’t drive the high-end trucks with all the fancy accouterments. They drive old beaters with dents, cracks and chipped paint. 

So, at the end of the day, they don't have an expensive, lockable storage compartment in which to throw their tools and equipment. They just toss the stuff into the bed and drive on.  This includes boxes of nails and screws. 

These boxes are probably closed and lain next to the man's other gear with little thought about repercussions and consequences. So, as he's driving along he hits a pothole. Everything in the bed raises an inch in the air and lands back down in it’s previous spot with nothing more than a loud bang. However, the lid of the nail box has loosened. 

On the next bump, the lid flies open. The next bump sees one or two nails fly out onto the bed. Then driving over rough pavement, not even a pothole, the vibration carries the nails down the length of the bed. They will then find a hole in the bed, either a natural one designed to let water out, or one from rust and wear. If there are no holes, the nails make it down to the end of the bed to the tailgate.  Normally, they’d be stopped by it, but it's an old truck and the fit isn’t as tight as in the early years.

In the end, the nails, screws or whatever find their way out of an opening and down onto the street. Just waiting for the next driver to come along and pick them up. In their tires.

And so that is the way all those nails, tacks, screws and whatever find their way onto our roads. Not because of some crazed youth out for a night of adventure. No, they are there thanks to that handyman you hired to fix some problem in your home. 

Remember this the next time you pass one of those old pickups. Be sure and shake your fist and cuss them out for all the mayhem (and cost) they've brought to your life. I'm sure they'll understand.

My Dad warning me not to ever put nails in the back of my Datsun pickup.