I swear this is true. A man and a woman were in court last month. Both had records for violence and assault. A restraining order prevented any communication between the guy, Theodore Murphy, and the girl, Nicole Osbourne. You can imagine the atmosphere of tension and suppressed rage.
But people are people, so this is what happened next. The guy asks the lawyers to pass a message to the girl. It says: "Will you marry me?"
The judge points out the "no- contact" restraining order prohibits her from responding in any way. So he amends it to allow her to react.
With tears in her eyes, she says: "Yes." They leave court together.
This case, which happened in New York last month, proves the songwriter's adage: "Love is strange." Details were forwarded to me by a lawyer, who said: "Where humans are concerned, extreme irrationality is the norm."
My unmarried Hong Kong friend, Cord Krohn, told me he wore a green shirt by chance on Valentine's Day and discovered that some people deliberately wear that color to celebrate Singles Awareness Day. Love hearts are red, and the opposite of red is green.
That evening, my mentor/ bartender told me that Singles Awareness Day is a new holiday, celebrated in February in the West and on November 11 in the East, during which single people give surprise gifts to themselves.
How does that work? "Happy Singles Awareness Day to me! Here, I bought me a gift. For me? Oh, I shouldn't have."
What do such cards say? "Dear John Doe, you may think no one in the world loves you, but don't worry, one person does. That's me, John Doe."
The more you think about it, the sadder it seems. The name of the day abbreviates to "SAD." *** Reader Wade Wollin bought a Hong Kong-made Valentine's Day card for his lovely wife, Erica Liu. When he got home and opened it to write inside, he found a pre-printed message saying: "With Deepest Sympathy."
This must be the first card exclusively designed for girls hooked up with the sort of men their mothers warned them about. *** At a barbecue the other day, one of my kids asked for a beer. I said sure.
Beer is super bitter to young tastebuds. He sipped it, pulled a face and returned the can.
But US columnist Joe Donatelli warned that there was one beer, Bayhawk Chocolate Porter, which was dangerously child-friendly.
He said: "If my dad had given me a taste when I was a kid, my childhood would have revolved around procuring fake IDs, filching chocolate porters from my friends' parents' refrigerators and trying to get a job at Bayhawk Brewing at age 10."
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