What’s Love Got To Do With It?

So, it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m thinking I should write something about love and all of that, but since this topic remains a mystery to me, I must defer to the experts, so I go to Dictionary.com

Dictionary.com has 28 definitions for the word love. Love has 28 definitions. Hate only has five. Seems hate is easy to nail down.

Love is more elusive. Some of the better love definitions: 1) a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person; 2) a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend; 3) Chiefly Tennis. a score of zero; nothing.

Tennis scoring is almost as much a mystery to me as love. But at least in tennis you have officials. In love, there’s nobody to keep you in line.

Of course, there’s also definition 3) sexual passion or desire.

Dictionary.com gives sex eight definitions. And they’re all real scientific-like: 1) either the male or female division of a species, esp. as differentiated with reference to the reproductive functions; 2) the sum of the structural and functional differences by which the male and female are distinguished, or the phenomena or behavior dependent on these differences; 3) the instinct or attraction drawing one sex toward another, or its manifestation in life and conduct.

Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?

Huh? What the? Manifestation in life and conduct? Sounds like someone has contracted something itchy.

I have never understood this. Love is all mystical and gooey and violins and profoundly tender and passionately affectionate, but sex is always male/female/genitalia/reproduction/propagation of the species. It’s like you have to put on a lab coat and safety goggles just to discuss boinking.

Seems to me sex gets way more consideration than love. You’d think sex would get less press since, by definition, it’s so boring and academic. But everyone, it seems, is obsessed with sex. Sex sex sex. And I’ve thought this for a long time now. This is not because I’m getting old and cynical or because the BBC recently reported that the G-spot doesn’t exist, it’s because something changed somewhere along the way and suddenly sex is the only game in town.

I think it all started with “Three’s Company.” Or maybe “The Love Boat.” I can’t remember, but I’m sure disco was involved. But now sex is all there is. It’s the only funny topic on T.V. I think every episode of “Friends” centered on sex and I don’t really need to say anything more than, “Two and a Half Men.”   

It’s too bad, really. There are all kinds of funny things going on in the world, but all we get is sex. Remember “The Mary Tyler Moore Show?” She didn’t even have a man! No sex going on in Minneapolis. Well, at least not in Mary’s apartment. Mary had bigger fish to fry. “Love is all around, no need to waste it, you could have the town, why don’t you take it.” Who needs sex when you can have Minneapolis? Or Mr. Grant?

And “The Bob Newhart Show.” I think that might have been one of the first T.V. shows where the married couple even got to be shown in bed together. Or maybe it was “The Brady Bunch.” It’s really a shame that none of those couples were having sex. They all looked so dashing in bed together. No one looks like that in bed now. No one has matching pajama sets or groovy shags. It’s all bare chests and Botox.

I don’t even know what to say about music. Back in the olden days, the 1970s, sex was in code. I only recently learned that “Shook Me All Night Long” wasn’t about dancing. And that “Afternoon Delight” had nothing at all to do with a picnic.

Kids in my high school are required to take Health class wherein they learn all about sex. The kind of sex heretofore defined. The sex where there are male and female genitalia and you should dress one of them up before the two shall meet, thereby avoiding any of that itchy manifestation stuff, or the plague.

I asked my students if love is ever mentioned in Health class. Nope. You can’t say love or Jesus in school.

I don’t get it. Just another aspect of this whole love/sex conundrum that baffles me. If you’re going to teach kids about their parts and how to wield them safely, shouldn’t you, maybe, mention that, in certain circles, people have been known to have sex when they are in love. You know, like the shin bone’s connected to the ankle bone, the heart muscle is connected to the nether regions.

But the heart cannot compete with the nether regions. The heart doesn’t have the junk in the trunk. These days, it’s nether regions: 20 – heart: love. Health class has no time for the heart, for love. Health class has enough on its hands with SAFE SEX.

Safe sex, safe sex, safe sex. How ‘bout safe love? No one ever talks about how sex, no matter how safe, can do Simply Terrible Damage to one’s heart.

Does Trojan make a condom for the cardiac muscle? I don’t think so and, if they do, I’m pretty sure they’re not handing them out in Health class. Budget freeze.