Letters to the Editor
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Love means never having to say Excuse Me?
Really Cary, you doubt that our lover swam the Golden Gate bridge drunk in the middle of the night? What was your first clue? The icy water? The unforgiving currents? The sharks? The fact that most people who do attempt the swim do so with a retinue of boats following them for safety?
Pish I say! Have you never been in love? Once, I loved so fiercely, so deeply, that I promised him I would swim the English Channel, then race to Paris so that I could meet him atop the Tour Eiffel on New Year's Day. I fulfilled my promise, dragging myself from the freezing water, I paid a farmer onze francs to give me a lift to Paris in the back of his cheese van. When I got to Paris, I raced to the top of the Tower, desperate to see my love.
Alas, he was not there. I waited. Oh, so long I waited. From my high perch, I passed the time watching some ambulanciers extricate some poor pedestrian from underneath an autobus and carry them away. When the gardes finally shooed me from the tower, I wandered bereft to a nearby cafe where I drowned my sorrows in vin rouge.
Shorty after that, I was diagnosed with cholera, contracted while swimming after another love down the Nile. When I died, no one I really cared about came to the funeral.
But I'd do it all again in a minute!!! For love is the triumph of hope over experience!! And reality!! And sharks!!