Editor's Note: "Recent Support for the Law of Unfair Magnetism and Adoration" Victoria Turner earned an honorable mention in the Synapse Storytelling Contest Creative Writing category.
D. Hunter
Received June 20, 2018. Accepted June 29, 2018.
Journal of Obligatory Social Interactions
Evidence suggests that when two post-marital members of a population express opposite opinions on a subject, especially among the people of small towns such as Hillock Green, there is a prevailing tendency toward a shift of allegiances into a majority, or at least plurality, favoring one of the candidate parties; that is, evidence of operation of the Law of Unfair Magnetism and Adoration, hereafter referred to as L.U.M.A., which has been corroborated as strongly by the anecdotal support of case studies as by primary component analysis of responses to the following questions, including “How are you,” “Are you going to the wedding?” and “Don’t you think it’s a little too soon?”
Referring to Figure 1, in which typical responses are tabulated by category and date of observation, a representative sample of townspeople — namely, the customers checking out at my cashier — supports the hypothesis that assignation of blame will converge in a linear fashion onto one party, over the course of six months after the two parties regrettably resorted to light battery and afterwards agreed, with frozen bags of peas clapped to their injuries, that the only things they had left in common were irreconcilable differences.
It is not atypical to observe in such cases that a separation occurs cleanly and without measureable division of opinions among the neighbors, coworkers, and nosy bus drivers.
But going back to the case of Hillock Green, where one party to the separation demonstrates a belief that a mere six months later it is time to jump back into the biological hamster wheel and take a new companion, without a shred of decency to take into account the size of their town or the proximity of the two parties’ apartments, we can see that in this case, the difference of opinions on this matter is associated with increases in measures of societal aversion to the party not blessed with a magnetic personality, as represented by the increased frequency of lingering eye contact over the register when I scoff at words like “nice,” as in “nice day,” or “good,” as in “good morning”.
However, the possibility of nonspecific effects of this less-charming party’s aberrant behavior producing such effects cannot be dismissed at this time, alluding to a positive correlation between the aforementioned party’s proximity with the newly engaged couple and the number of times she walks into telephone poles or other free-standing structures.
Further study is needed to interpret the results from Hillock Green in relation to post-marital disputes.
Addendum: This author can neither confirm nor deny the existence of a conflict of interest.
