Love is a Fallacy, by Max Shulman - ….docVIP

Love is a Fallacy, by Max Shulman. Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute, and astute. I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, as precise as a chemists scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And think of it! I was only twenty. It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Bellows, my roommate at the university. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable. Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze that comes along, to surrender yourself to idiocy just because everybody is doing it--this, to me, is the acme of mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey. One afternoon I found Petey lying on his bed with an expression of such distress on his face that I immediately diagnosed appendicitis. Dont move, I said. Dont take a laxative. Ill get a doctor. Raccoon, he mumbled thickly. Raccoon? I said, pausing in my flight. I want a raccoon coat, he wailed. I perceived that his trouble was not physical, but mental. Why do you want a raccoon coat? I should have known it, he cried, pounding is temples. I should have known theyd come back when the Charleston came back. Like a fool, I spent all my money for textbooks and now I cant get a raccoon coat. Can you mean I said incredulously, that people are actually wearing raccoon coats again? All the Big Men on Campus are wearing them. Whereve you been? In the library, I said, naming a place not frequented by Big Men on Campus. He leaped from the bed and paced the room. Ive got to have a raccoon coat, he said passionately. Ive got to! Petey, why? Look at it rationally. Raccoon coats are unsanitary. They shed. They smell bad. They weigh too much. Theyre unsightly. They-- You dont understand, he interrupted impatiently. Its the thing to do. Dont you want to be in the swim? No, I said truthfully. Wel