Love Is a Mix Tape

According to the Western philosopher Pat Benatar, love is a battlefield. Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap. The stoner kids who spent the summer of 1978 looking cool on the hoods of their Tran Ams in the Pierce Elementary School parking lot used to scare little kids by blasting the Sweet hit "Love Is Like Oxygen" - you get too much, you get too high, not enough and you're gonna die. Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times all agree: They want to know what love is, and they want to show them.

Renee always swore her best friend in high school would break up with girls by taping "Free Bird" for them. A guy I knew in college dumped his ladies by taping Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" for them. In college I once thought I was breaking up with a girl by giving her a tape that began with Roxy Music's "The Thrill of It All." It took a few days for me to realize that she had no idea we were briken up, which I guess means it didn't work. Why do people do this? Asshologists, please advise.