In every language, every culture, every bucolic village or booming metropolis, humans use the same language for love — we “fall” in love. We don’t rise up to love. Love is something we capitulate to. We do not choose it.

Or so the language of love teaches us.

I blame it on those pesky Romantics. (Always blame it on the writers and artists.) In almost every romantic storyline, a character with an unfulfilled desire for someone moves the plot forward and culminates in a tragic ending.

Unrequited love drove Madame Bovary to swig arsenic. In Great Expectations, Pip is smitten…

The drama began as a simple Tweet. The British National Health Service (NHS) posted that they needed blood donations. But it was how they worded the request that got them pilloried by the Twistosphere.

We need “black blood,” read the Tweet.

Over the following days, the racism accusations got bloodier than a full blood bank. Many people complained that race is a social construct that could not classify blood types. The NHS was about to get ejected with one press of the cancel button…

But the NHS had a rational defense.

In their follow-up Tweet, they explained, “Everyone’s blood IS…

Our disagreement began over bats. Mark* accused me of being “as blind as a bat.”

“Then I must have excellent eyesight because bats are not blind,” I retorted.

He patted me on my head and let out a frustrated sigh. “Honey, bats are blind. That is why they use echolocation.”

“Yes, bats use echolocation, but they are not blind,” I argued back.

I used to think bats were blind too. But that was before bats began interfering in my love life. And since I am a big believer in knowing your enemy, I have been educating myself on these puppies…

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My friend Alex* is no longer speaking to me. We have always had our differences. She is a conspiracy theorist, and I am an author of science books for young adults. That alone is going to cause some lively debates. But I have known this friend since I was seven, so I tolerate her “Pizzagate” QAnon malarkey because she got grandfathered in decades ago.

We all have at least one outlier friend or family member who believes in hilarious theories. (Alex thinks Dr. Fauci is tracking people through a microchip embedded in vaccines.) …

I risked my life to write this article.

For the past few months, I have been practicing the “zipper merge” or late merge. The zipper merge is when lanes are reduced, a driver merges at the ending lane reduction point, even in heavy traffic (see image above). For example, if two lanes narrow into one, you merge when your lane ends, thereby cutting a line of patiently waiting cars.

And pissing off a lot of drivers… I know. I tried it.

One red-faced driver laid on his horn for at least a minute. Another shouted such profanities I was afraid…

On the fifth date with Ross* I got “the icks.” We have all been there. Suddenly, you realize a future with this person is an impossibility. The problem with Ross was that he was more Nascar, and I am more Netflix documentary, wine tasting, and getting lost in my favorite museum. We simply were not compatible.

I explained that I enjoyed differences in my friendships, but I prefer similarities in my romantic relationships. And we didn’t have enough in common.

Ross immediately got defensive and asked the question that everyone dreads.

“Are you putting me in the friend zone?”

And…

Dr. Fauci accomplished the impossible this week. He turned me on by yelling. I normally don’t like men who yell, but he was yelling at Sen. Rand Paul. I nearly dropped an ovary.

“Give it to him, Tony!” I screamed like a lust-crazed virago.

Often, I find myself fantasizing about my knight in shining virus armor. We are locked away in a bunker together riding out this pandemic, and he’s whispering immunology facts into my ear while sucking on his glasses. (Sigh)

And although many women would agree with me about Fauci’s bangable factor, he’s doesn't exactly have the typical…

How I would love to go back in time and have a tea party with Dr. Marie Stopes (1880–1958). We could talk about her fossil collection (she was an expert paleontologist), sex (she wrote a best-selling sex book), and parenting (she also wrote a parenting book.)

But what I would most like to debate with her is women’s reproductive rights. Dr. Stopes is best remembered as the founder of Britain’s first birth control clinic. She also rubbed elbows with her buddy Hitler and supported creating a super race through the eugenics movement. So there’s that to discuss.

In her book…