Married for 11 days now!

Bliss!

Our previous record of seeing each other consecutive days was four days due to our long distance relationship. I love being married, I love my husband, and I love seeing my best friend every day!

More photos to come!

One Day!

"The things that we love tell us what we are." ~ St. Thomas Aquinas

So blessed that this man's goodness rubs off on me! 

Six Days!

“Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.” 

~ G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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Bed Set - Check! 

So happy to have found this pretty piece on Craigslist!

Big thanks to my Aunt for sending me the link, to my Mom for checking it out and my Dad and Uncle for moving it into our new apartment! 

Updates!

Life has been moving along at a light speed pace and I thought we'd update everyone on the changes that have been taking place!

I passed my National Physical Therapy Boards! Hurray! 

(Last exam ever, except for Judgement day!)

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Graduated with a Doctorate in Physical Therapy 

I was so blessed to have toiled through grad school with this wonderful group! 

My parents did so much to support me! They should both get honorary degrees!

An amazing woman and my dear friend: Wife,  mother, and graduate student = superwoman!!!

Study group flexing our muscles!

This wonderful man did so much to encourage me through difficult classes and internships!

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Celebrated both our birthdays, each a day apart! Mine on May 26th and his 29th!

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I was ecstatic to find a swimsuit I loved for the honeymoon!

(I know! It just looks like a summer dress!)

It's from meanttobemosdest.com

I was able to pick my own design!

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We found a one bedroom apartment about 15 minutes from each of our jobs!

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My Mom and bridesmaids threw me a beautiful shower!

All the bridesmaids except my sister who was in Argentina and Anthony's sister who is in Idaho. We missed them!

Four of us sisters with my Mom. My other sister was having fun exploring Argentina at the time :)

My very dear friend who is due with her third child at the end of July! 

Fancy toilet paper dresses!

My cousin even took flowers off a shelf in the restaurant to top off her look! 

My Mom bought me this corsage that is perfectly my style!

My Mom crocheted me a blanket!  

I can't wait to wear my real dress!

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We found a good deal on living room furniture at an estate sale and bedroom furniture on craigslist!

I can't wait to put up photos soon!

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And I am so excited about a comic that Anthony is working on that deals with the existence of God. It's quite spectacular and I can't wait to share it with the masses!

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It is 12 days until our wedding! There is still so much to do!

Please pray for us! 

Most sincerely, 

             

                          Andrea Rose

Philosophical Romance

I love Catholicism. It is the only worldview that is able to make sense of all aspects of human experience. It makes sense of science, explaining why there is order, why the universe is intelligible, why science works at all. And it makes sense of non-scientific, but deeply important, aspects of our experience, like beauty. What a poet tries to capture, Catholicism has. That awed catching of the breath during a symphony, the aching yearning that whispers to us from behind the sunset . . . Catholicism tells us why we feel this way. 

And Catholicism is incredibly rational. Nothing in it is arbitrary. No Catholic idea or teaching is "just because." The rational articulation of the faith given to us by Thomas Aquinas is stunning. It is a comprehensive, systematic framework for making sense of reality. It helps us see everything in light of what is real, what is true, and — because truth is beauty at its highest level — what is beautiful.

This Catholic framework illuminates Andrea's and my love in some amazing ways. Andrea likes it when I talk about this stuff. She calls it "philosophical romance." I'm just glad I found a girl who doesn't mind listening to my ramblings!

Philosophical romance is pretty cool, though. For instance, there's a popular song from one of the Twilight movies that has a refrain that goes something like, "I have loved you for a thousand years, and I'll love you for a thousand more." Well, one of the wonderful things about being Catholic is that I hear a song like that and think, "Only a thousand?"

They're selling themselves short!

See, I tell Andrea that I really will love her for a thousand years . . . and for a million years, and for a billion years, and then for a billion more after that, and a billion more, and . . . a billion more, and, well, a billion more. And a billion more. And a billion more. And a billion more. . . .

And you know what? It's true. It's not hyperbole. It is plain old, literal, honest-to-goodness truth.

We humans will exist forever. I don't think of that as often as I should. We are all immortal. Whether we spend our immortal existence in a state of love, immersed in Love Himself, or in a kind of reductio ad me, shrunk into our selfishness forever, is up to us. C.S. Lewis wrote in The Weight of Glory, "It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations."

This means that, should Andrea and I reach heaven (as I have a holy hope we shall — though I am sure, in my case, only after a long detour in Purgatory!), we will love each other for eternity. Eternity is something we cannot even comprehend, time-bound as we are in this life. Oh, we intellectually understand the concept, but we don't really get it. We can't feel the full staggering weight of it. We will never end. We will experience more time than the universe has even been in existence for. And when that time has passed, we will experience that amount of time again, and then again, and again . . . In fact, we will exist for so long and experience so much time that the entire 15 billion years that the universe has existed will be something we look back on the way we look back now at a single moment many years ago. 

Another awesome truth is that my love for Andrea will never be less than it is now. It can only increase. Yes, I know that there will be hardships in marriage. Feelings ebb and flow. But love, genuine love, transcends momentary feelings. The difficulties are the crucible in which love is purified and set into the will. And then, after we have reached God, our love for each other will be truly perfected in our love for Him. So I can tell Andrea with complete truthfulness that I will never love her less than I do now.

Oh, and speaking of the universe, Andrea and I liked to sit out looking at the stars in the warm evenings last summer. I've always loved to stargaze. I love seeing the millions and billions of stars, feeling that awesome vastness of space. For example, the Andromeda galaxy, which we can see with our naked eyes, is 2.5 million light years away. That means that the light which we see when we look at it left those stars 2.5 million years ago. That's incredible! That light left that galaxy before human civilization existed. Our fastest spaceships go only 1/18,000th of the speed of light, so if we set out for Andromeda today we would reach it in 45 billion years. The universe itself has only been around for 15 billion. That gives us a sense of scale! We humans will never experience even a billionth, even a billion billionth, of the universe. Even if we should rise to Star Trek-style levels of technology, the universe will always dwarf us. We can never own the universe. It will always be too big for us to possess.

Incomprehensible vastness

And yet we can possess something far greater than the universe. We can possess its Creator. We are destined for a union with God so complete that there will be no boundaries between Him and us. The hand that sparked the Big Bang, that determined the bounds of the universe, that laid out the courses of the stars and planets, that set forth the laws of physics, and that sustains all of creation moment to moment, will be ours, and we will be completely His. We will be entirely immersed in His essence, His very Being. Love Himself will pour Himself into us continually, and we will give back to Him our own poor love, forever. 

This has great meaning when I think about marriage. It means that Andrea is loved by God with an infinite love, and she is destined to be united to Him. The universe will someday cease to exist, but Andrea will not. God loves her more than he loves the entire universe, which means that she is more valuable than the universe. She is a universe unto herself. All the laws of physics and the astonishing exactitude and perfection of the operation of the universe, all the breathtaking vastness and soul-searing beauty of it, cannot compare to the vastness of Andrea's soul, which is able to possess and be possessed by Being Himself, which is free to make choices and — wonder of wonders! — to love. And so, in marrying Andrea, I will be doing something greater and more momentous than possessing the universe itself. Something more valuable than the entire universe will be in my charge. That's an awe-inspiring thought.

To end on a light note, Andrea and I like to speculate on what things will be like when we get our glorified bodies at the end of the world. See, humans are not spirits like angels. Nor are we "ghosts in machines," spirits riding around in bodies. Our bodies are essential to us. We are, in a real and fundamental way, our bodies. The separation of soul from body at death is unnatural! We are not meant to exist that way. So we will eventually get our bodies back. And our bodies will be glorified and perfected. They will be able to travel as fast as thought, walk through other matter, and do many other things a superhero would be jealous of. But they will still be bodies. They will still be physical matter. Angels travel as fast as thought because, being pure spirits, they go from one place to another in the same way that we think of one thing and then another, without anything in between. (In fact, the "presence" of angels is this kind of thing; not a physical presence, but like turning a thought towards something.) Our glorified bodies will also be able to travel as fast as thought, but, since we will still be physical beings, we will travel through every point in space in between. What a rush!

What all this means is that I will still be able to dip Andrea. In fact, I will be able to dip her better than I ever could now! Couple this with the knowledge of our immortality, and Andrea has requested that I dip her from the Mariana Trench to the moon (assuming they are still around) on a certain day almost one billion years from now.

Wheeeee!

I told her, "It's a date."

Love Laughter

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, precise as a chemist’s scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And—think of it!—I only eighteen.

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 oneself to idiocy just because everybody else 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. “Don’t move,” I said, “Don’t take a laxative. I’ll 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 his temples. “I should have known they’d come back when the Charleston came back. Like a fool I spent all my money for textbooks, and now I can’t 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. Where’ve 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. “I’ve got to have a raccoon coat,” he said passionately. “I’ve got to!”

“Petey, why? Look at it rationally. Raccoon coats are unsanitary. They shed. They smell bad. They weigh too much. They’re unsightly. They—”

“You don’t understand,” he interrupted impatiently. “It’s the thing to do. Don’t you want to be in the swim?”

“No,” I said truthfully.

“Well, I do,” he declared. “I’d give anything for a raccoon coat. Anything!”

My brain, that precision instrument, slipped into high gear. “Anything?” I asked, looking at him narrowly.

“Anything,” he affirmed in ringing tones.

I stroked my chin thoughtfully. It so happened that I knew where to get my hands on a raccoon coat. My father had had one in his undergraduate days; it lay now in a trunk in the attic back home. It also happened that Petey had something I wanted. He didn’t have it exactly, but at least he had first rights on it. I refer to his girl, Polly Espy.

I had long coveted Polly Espy. Let me emphasize that my desire for this young woman was not emotional in nature. She was, to be sure, a girl who excited the emotions, but I was not one to let my heart rule my head. I wanted Polly for a shrewdly calculated, entirely cerebral reason.

I was a freshman in law school. In a few years I would be out in practice. I was well aware of the importance of the right kind of wife in furthering a lawyer’s career. The successful lawyers I had observed were, almost without exception, married to beautiful, gracious, intelligent women. With one omission, Polly fitted these specifications perfectly.

Beautiful she was. She was not yet of pin-up proportions, but I felt that time would supply the lack. She already had the makings.

Gracious she was. By gracious I mean full of graces. She had an erectness of carriage, an ease of bearing, a poise that clearly indicated the best of breeding. At table her manners were exquisite. I had seen her at the Kozy Kampus Korner eating the specialty of the house—a sandwich that contained scraps of pot roast, gravy, chopped nuts, and a dipper of sauerkraut—without even getting her fingers moist.

Intelligent she was not. In fact, she veered in the opposite direction. But I believed that under my guidance she would smarten up. At any rate, it was worth a try. It is, after all, easier to make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful.

“Petey,” I said, “are you in love with Polly Espy?”

“I think she’s a keen kid,” he replied, “but I don’t know if you’d call it love. Why?”

“Do you,” I asked, “have any kind of formal arrangement with her? I mean are you going steady or anything like that?”

“No. We see each other quite a bit, but we both have other dates. Why?”

“Is there,” I asked, “any other man for whom she has a particular fondness?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

I nodded with satisfaction. “In other words, if you were out of the picture, the field would be open. Is that right?”

“I guess so. What are you getting at?”

“Nothing , nothing,” I said innocently, and took my suitcase out the closet.

“Where are you going?” asked Petey.

“Home for weekend.” I threw a few things into the bag.

“Listen,” he said, clutching my arm eagerly, “while you’re home, you couldn’t get some money from your old man, could you, and lend it to me so I can buy a raccoon coat?”

“I may do better than that,” I said with a mysterious wink and closed my bag and left.

“Look,” I said to Petey when I got back Monday morning. I threw open the suitcase and revealed the huge, hairy, gamy object that my father had worn in his Stutz Bearcat in 1925.

“Holy Toledo!” said Petey reverently. He plunged his hands into the raccoon coat and then his face. “Holy Toledo!” he repeated fifteen or twenty times.

“Would you like it?” I asked.

“Oh yes!” he cried, clutching the greasy pelt to him. Then a canny look came into his eyes. “What do you want for it?”

“Your girl.” I said, mincing no words.

“Polly?” he said in a horrified whisper. “You want Polly?”

“That’s right.”

He flung the coat from him. “Never,” he said stoutly.

I shrugged. “Okay. If you don’t want to be in the swim, I guess it’s your business.”

I sat down in a chair and pretended to read a book, but out of the corner of my eye I kept watching Petey. He was a torn man. First he looked at the coat with the expression of a waif at a bakery window. Then he turned away and set his jaw resolutely. Then he looked back at the coat, with even more longing in his face. Then he turned away, but with not so much resolution this time. Back and forth his head swiveled, desire waxing, resolution waning. Finally he didn’t turn away at all; he just stood and stared with mad lust at the coat.

“It isn’t as though I was in love with Polly,” he said thickly. “Or going steady or anything like that.”

“That’s right,” I murmured.

“What’s Polly to me, or me to Polly?”

“Not a thing,” said I.

“It’s just been a casual kick—just a few laughs, that’s all.”

“Try on the coat,” said I.

He complied. The coat bunched high over his ears and dropped all the way down to his shoe tops. He looked like a mound of dead raccoons. “Fits fine,” he said happily.

I rose from my chair. “Is it a deal?” I asked, extending my hand.

He swallowed. “It’s a deal,” he said and shook my hand.

I had my first date with Polly the following evening. This was in the nature of a survey; I wanted to find out just how much work I had to do to get her mind up to the standard I required. I took her first to dinner. “Gee, that was a delish dinner,” she said as we left the restaurant. Then I took her to a movie. “Gee, that was a marvy movie,” she said as we left the theatre. And then I took her home. “Gee, I had a sensaysh time,” she said as she bade me good night.

I went back to my room with a heavy heart. I had gravely underestimated the size of my task. This girl’s lack of information was terrifying. Nor would it be enough merely to supply her with information. First she had to be taught to think. This loomed as a project of no small dimensions, and at first I was tempted to give her back to Petey. But then I got to thinking about her abundant physical charms and about the way she entered a room and the way she handled a knife and fork, and I decided to make an effort.

I went about it, as in all things, systematically. I gave her a course in logic. It happened that I, as a law student, was taking a course in logic myself, so I had all the facts at my fingertips. “Poll’,” I said to her when I picked her up on our next date, “tonight we are going over to the Knoll and talk.”

“Oo, terrif,” she replied. One thing I will say for this girl: you would go far to find another so agreeable.

We went to the Knoll, the campus trysting place, and we sat down under an old oak, and she looked at me expectantly. “What are we going to talk about?” she asked.

“Logic.”

She thought this over for a minute and decided she liked it. “Magnif,” she said.

“Logic,” I said, clearing my throat, “is the science of thinking. Before we can think correctly, we must first learn to recognize the common fallacies of logic. These we will take up tonight.”

“Wow-dow!” she cried, clapping her hands delightedly.

I winced, but went bravely on. “First let us examine the fallacy called Dicto Simpliciter.”

“By all means,” she urged, batting her lashes eagerly.

“Dicto Simpliciter means an argument based on an unqualified generalization. For example: Exercise is good. Therefore everybody should exercise.”

“I agree,” said Polly earnestly. “I mean exercise is wonderful. I mean it builds the body and everything.”

“Polly,” I said gently, “the argument is a fallacy. Exercise is good is an unqualified generalization. For instance, if you have heart disease, exercise is bad, not good. Many people are ordered by their doctors not to exercise. You must qualify the generalization. You must say exercise is usually good, or exercise is good for most people. Otherwise you have committed a Dicto Simpliciter. Do you see?”

“No,” she confessed. “But this is marvy. Do more! Do more!”

“It will be better if you stop tugging at my sleeve,” I told her, and when she desisted, I continued. “Next we take up a fallacy called Hasty Generalization. Listen carefully: You can’t speak French. Petey Bellows can’t speak French. I must therefore conclude that nobody at the University of Minnesota can speak French.”

“Really?” said Polly, amazed. “Nobody?”

I hid my exasperation. “Polly, it’s a fallacy. The generalization is reached too hastily. There are too few instances to support such a conclusion.”

“Know any more fallacies?” she asked breathlessly. “This is more fun than dancing even.”

I fought off a wave of despair. I was getting nowhere with this girl, absolutely nowhere. Still, I am nothing if not persistent. I continued. “Next comes Post Hoc. Listen to this: Let’s not take Bill on our picnic. Every time we take him out with us, it rains.”

“I know somebody just like that,” she exclaimed. “A girl back home—Eula Becker, her name is. It never fails. Every single time we take her on a picnic—”

“Polly,” I said sharply, “it’s a fallacy. Eula Becker doesn’t cause the rain. She has no connection with the rain. You are guilty of Post Hoc if you blame Eula Becker.”

“I’ll never do it again,” she promised contritely. “Are you mad at me?”

I sighed. “No, Polly, I’m not mad.”

“Then tell me some more fallacies.”

“All right. Let’s try Contradictory Premises.”

“Yes, let’s,” she chirped, blinking her eyes happily.

I frowned, but plunged ahead. “Here’s an example of Contradictory Premises: If God can do anything, can He make a stone so heavy that He won’t be able to lift it?”

“Of course,” she replied promptly.

“But if He can do anything, He can lift the stone,” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” she said thoughtfully. “Well, then I guess He can’t make the stone.”

“But He can do anything,” I reminded her.

She scratched her pretty, empty head. “I’m all confused,” she admitted.

“Of course you are. Because when the premises of an argument contradict each other, there can be no argument. If there is an irresistible force, there can be no immovable object. If there is an immovable object, there can be no irresistible force. Get it?”

“Tell me more of this keen stuff,” she said eagerly.

I consulted my watch. “I think we’d better call it a night. I’ll take you home now, and you go over all the things you’ve learned. We’ll have another session tomorrow night.”

I deposited her at the girls’ dormitory, where she assured me that she had had a perfectly terrif evening, and I went glumly home to my room. Petey lay snoring in his bed, the raccoon coat huddled like a great hairy beast at his feet. For a moment I considered waking him and telling him that he could have his girl back. It seemed clear that my project was doomed to failure. The girl simply had a logic-proof head.

But then I reconsidered. I had wasted one evening; I might as well waste another. Who knew? Maybe somewhere in the extinct crater of her mind a few members still smoldered. Maybe somehow I could fan them into flame. Admittedly it was not a prospect fraught with hope, but I decided to give it one more try.

Seated under the oak the next evening I said, “Our first fallacy tonight is called Ad Misericordiam.”

She quivered with delight.

“Listen closely,” I said. “A man applies for a job. When the boss asks him what his qualifications are, he replies that he has a wife and six children at home, the wife is a helpless cripple, the children have nothing to eat, no clothes to wear, no shoes on their feet, there are no beds in the house, no coal in the cellar, and winter is coming.”

A tear rolled down each of Polly’s pink cheeks. “Oh, this is awful, awful,” she sobbed.

“Yes, it’s awful,” I agreed, “but it’s no argument. The man never answered the boss’s question about his qualifications. Instead he appealed to the boss’s sympathy. He committed the fallacy of Ad Misericordiam. Do you understand?”

“Have you got a handkerchief?” she blubbered.

I handed her a handkerchief and tried to keep from screaming while she wiped her eyes. “Next,” I said in a carefully controlled tone, “we will discuss False Analogy. Here is an example: Students should be allowed to look at their textbooks during examinations. After all, surgeons have X-rays to guide them during an operation, lawyers have briefs to guide them during a trial, carpenters have blueprints to guide them when they are building a house. Why, then, shouldn’t students be allowed to look at their textbooks during an examination?”

“There now,” she said enthusiastically, “is the most marvy idea I’ve heard in years.”

“Polly,” I said testily, “the argument is all wrong. Doctors, lawyers, and carpenters aren’t taking a test to see how much they have learned, but students are. The situations are altogether different, and you can’t make an analogy between them.”

“I still think it’s a good idea,” said Polly.

“Nuts,” I muttered. Doggedly I pressed on. “Next we’ll try Hypothesis Contrary to Fact.”

“Sounds yummy,” was Polly’s reaction.

“Listen: If Madame Curie had not happened to leave a photographic plate in a drawer with a chunk of pitchblende, the world today would not know about radium.”

“True, true,” said Polly, nodding her head “Did you see the movie? Oh, it just knocked me out. That Walter Pidgeon is so dreamy. I mean he fractures me.”

“If you can forget Mr. Pidgeon for a moment,” I said coldly, “I would like to point out that statement is a fallacy. Maybe Madame Curie would have discovered radium at some later date. Maybe somebody else would have discovered it. Maybe any number of things would have happened. You can’t start with a hypothesis that is not true and then draw any supportable conclusions from it.”

“They ought to put Walter Pidgeon in more pictures,” said Polly, “I hardly ever see him any more.”

One more chance, I decided. But just one more. There is a limit to what flesh and blood can bear. “The next fallacy is called Poisoning the Well.”

“How cute!” she gurgled.

“Two men are having a debate. The first one gets up and says, ‘My opponent is a notorious liar. You can’t believe a word that he is going to say.’ ... Now, Polly, think. Think hard. What’s wrong?”

I watched her closely as she knit her creamy brow in concentration. Suddenly a glimmer of intelligence—the first I had seen—came into her eyes. “It’s not fair,” she said with indignation. “It’s not a bit fair. What chance has the second man got if the first man calls him a liar before he even begins talking?”

“Right!” I cried exultantly. “One hundred per cent right. It’s not fair. The first man has poisoned the well before anybody could drink from it. He has hamstrung his opponent before he could even start ... Polly, I’m proud of you.”

“Pshaws,” she murmured, blushing with pleasure.

“You see, my dear, these things aren’t so hard. All you have to do is concentrate. Think—examine—evaluate. Come now, let’s review everything we have learned.”

“Fire away,” she said with an airy wave of her hand.

Heartened by the knowledge that Polly was not altogether a cretin, I began a long, patient review of all I had told her. Over and over and over again I cited instances, pointed out flaws, kept hammering away without letup. It was like digging a tunnel. At first, everything was work, sweat, and darkness. I had no idea when I would reach the light, or even if I would. But I persisted. I pounded and clawed and scraped, and finally I was rewarded. I saw a chink of light. And then the chink got bigger and the sun came pouring in and all was bright.

Five grueling nights with this took, but it was worth it. I had made a logician out of Polly; I had taught her to think. My job was done. She was worthy of me, at last. She was a fit wife for me, a proper hostess for my many mansions, a suitable mother for my well-heeled children.

It must not be thought that I was without love for this girl. Quite the contrary. Just as Pygmalion loved the perfect woman he had fashioned, so I loved mine. I decided to acquaint her with my feelings at our very next meeting. The time had come to change our relationship from academic to romantic.

“Polly,” I said when next we sat beneath our oak, “tonight we will not discuss fallacies.”

“Aw, gee,” she said, disappointed.

“My dear,” I said, favoring her with a smile, “we have now spent five evenings together. We have gotten along splendidly. It is clear that we are well matched.”

“Hasty Generalization,” said Polly brightly.

“I beg your pardon,” said I.

“Hasty Generalization,” she repeated. “How can you say that we are well matched on the basis of only five dates?”

I chuckled with amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons well. “My dear,” I said, patting her hand in a tolerant manner, “five dates is plenty. After all, you don’t have to eat a whole cake to know that it’s good.”

“False Analogy,” said Polly promptly. “I’m not a cake. I’m a girl.”

I chuckled with somewhat less amusement. The dear child had learned her lessons perhaps too well. I decided to change tactics. Obviously the best approach was a simple, strong, direct declaration of love. I paused for a moment while my massive brain chose the proper word. Then I began:

“Polly, I love you. You are the whole world to me, the moon and the stars and the constellations of outer space. Please, my darling, say that you will go steady with me, for if you will not, life will be meaningless. I will languish. I will refuse my meals. I will wander the face of the earth, a shambling, hollow-eyed hulk.”

There, I thought, folding my arms, that ought to do it.

“Ad Misericordiam,” said Polly.

I ground my teeth. I was not Pygmalion; I was Frankenstein, and my monster had me by the throat. Frantically I fought back the tide of panic surging through me; at all costs I had to keep cool.

“Well, Polly,” I said, forcing a smile, “you certainly have learned your fallacies.”

“You’re darn right,” she said with a vigorous nod.

“And who taught them to you, Polly?”

“You did.”

“That’s right. So you do owe me something, don’t you, my dear? If I hadn’t come along you never would have learned about fallacies.”

“Hypothesis Contrary to Fact,” she said instantly.

I dashed perspiration from my brow. “Polly,” I croaked, “you mustn’t take all these things so literally. I mean this is just classroom stuff. You know that the things you learn in school don’t have anything to do with life.”

“Dicto Simpliciter,” she said, wagging her finger at me playfully.

That did it. I leaped to my feet, bellowing like a bull. “Will you or will you not go steady with me?”

“I will not,” she replied.

“Why not?” I demanded.

“Because this afternoon I promised Petey Bellows that I would go steady with him.”

I reeled back, overcome with the infamy of it. After he promised, after he made a deal, after he shook my hand! “The rat!” I shrieked, kicking up great chunks of turf. “You can’t go with him, Polly. He’s a liar. He’s a cheat. He’s a rat.”

“Poisoning the Well ,” said Polly, “and stop shouting. I think shouting must be a fallacy too.”

With an immense effort of will, I modulated my voice. “All right,” I said. “You’re a logician. Let’s look at this thing logically. How could you choose Petey Bellows over me? Look at me—a brilliant student, a tremendous intellectual, a man with an assured future. Look at Petey—a knothead, a jitterbug, a guy who’ll never know where his next meal is coming from. Can you give me one logical reason why you should go steady with Petey Bellows?”

“I certainly can,” declared Polly. “He’s got a raccoon coat.”

Source

Thanks to Deirdre at Like Mother, Like Daughter for the link!