love

I’m reading this book about the history of the ancient world, by a man we’ll call Professor Chump, for reasons that will soon become clear. On the cover, Professor Chump receives authorial credit, but with a line immediately following noting that his wife, Mrs. Chump, provided all the interior maps.

If you turn to the acknowledgment pages, Professor Chump is fulsome in his praise of Mrs. Chump’s many virtues, and thanks her for the maps she has provided for his tome.

But, here’s the thing.

The maps are terrible.

I mean, they’re accurate, as far as I can tell, but it looks like they were created in the version of Microsoft Paint included with Windows 3.1, printed out on a decades-old dot matrix printer, photocopied, faxed, and only then included in the book.

And, yet, there is the acknowledgments page, and there is Professor Chump praising his wife’s maps.

It is an impenetrable riddle. I wonder – does Prof. Chump know his wife’s maps are that bad? Did he include them in the book for the sake of maintaining the structural integrity of his marriage? Is he so utterly whipped that he didn’t dare tell Mrs. Chump that her maps were bad – that if she were the empress of cartography, she would be naked?

Or is he so in love that he is blind to the maps’ flaws, and sees them as masterpieces of interior illustration?

We do crazy, crazy things for love, my friends. Crazy things.

-JM