by Roving Reporter, ©2024
(Dec. 26, 2024) — “L-O-V-E” (2:32)
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to ‘The Pulse of the Nation,’ the place to hear it here first. Professor Zorkophsky will be our featured guest because, you guessed it, he’s back on top of the bestseller list with his latest book in his PTSD series, ‘The Love Force.’ Welcome to ‘Pulse,’ the most-watched information show in its time slot.”
“Thank you for the invite, Roving; always glad to see you and meet old friends. By the way, how is everybody doing these days?”
“Everyone is doing just fine, especially after that landslide election of President Trump, except, of course, for Henry who had his heart set on being named Secretary of Defense.”
“I feel bad for him, but he could still be named to oversee something, couldn’t he? Maybe Secretary of the Navy? If nothing else, in charge of making the blue-water navy and submarines women-free.”
“We can only hope. Now, getting to your book, it’s rather interesting how you put it all together. You have 26 chapters, each from 3-10 pages. I take it each chapter is a different patient of yours and you use letters instead of names; isn’t that right?”
“That’s about it. Chapter ‘D’ was from a session with a famous movie star, while chapter ‘S’ is one of our politicians.”
“But there’s no laughter, is there?”
“No, I’m afraid not. In Chapter ‘M’ the patient was afraid to ask his wife to maybe start over, give the marriage a second chance; he was afraid she’d tell him to take a hike. Years later he was informed that, upon hearing that she was divorced, she cried, and the last thing he ever wanted to do was to make her cry. But by that time she was remarried and out of his life. That was a sad one.”
“How about another one?”
“Alright. In Chapter ‘L’ the patient ate a bullet and a week later won the lottery.”
“Care to tell us a little bit more about that one?”
“For sure. That particular patient was not one of mine; I want to make that clear from the start, but the story was so sad that I just had to include it in the book. Newlyweds, well, kind-of, two years married, and the husband couldn’t shake the nightmares, so he took out a million-dollar life insurance policy on himself and, on the way home from the insurance office, stopped at an A&W root beer stand, chugged three large ones and shot himself at a laundromat parking lot on the way home. The next week he won a mini-lottery — you know the ones, payout on five numbers, not six, so the payout was only a million — and that was good, I guess, because the insurance policy wouldn’t pay out for suicide unless the policy was over ten years old. So the wife got something after all, but she lost the love of her life.”
“But that doesn’t mean that the nightmares would’ve stopped, even if he won; isn’t that right?”
“Maybe so, but no doubt it might’ve made his life a little less stressful.”
“That’s true. You mention love in all the chapters.”
“Think ‘love’ as a force not unlike gravity.”
“You mind expanding on that a little bit?”
“You can measure Dark Matter, but you can’t see it. You can measure gravity, but you can’t see it. You can know love, but you can’t measure it or weigh it, but you know it’s there, for sure. People have died for love, killed for love, and suffered for love. Those Veterans in my book all felt love for their country, and our Constitution, and when they died, or left, or ‘took a hike,’ all loved. You can’t turn love on/off like a faucet; it doesn’t work that way. You can’t make a magnet change polarity any more than you can stop love by a divorce decree.”
“So why do people get divorced?”
“The root cause of every divorce is ‘Failure to Communicate’ (0:50).”
“Well, I see our time is up, and we wish your book great success. This is your Roving Reporter, along with Professor Zorkophsky, wishing each of you a goodnight: Goodnight.
“Good show. Burger time: my treat.”
“I’m Sorry” (2:40)
Roving Reporter