OCTOBER 12th - Crazy Little Thing



Ahh Love. Crazy little thing. It has inspired great works of art but has also caused violence and war. It can make you do crazy things. It made Lloyd Dobbler hold up a boombox playing a Peter Gabriel classic even after Diane Court gave him a break-up pen. It made Jack Dawson let Rose hog a perfectly good door and freeze to death in the North Atlantic. And it happens in real life to. Like when Thomas Jefferson, the man who was not impressed by anything, jumped over a fountain while walking with Maria Cosway in Paris. TJ broke his wrist. That broken wrist and TJ losing self-control was unusual, but hardly an issue--besides the broken wrist. And the little fact that Maria Cosway was married. So once his bones healed, on this day in 1786, Thomas Jefferson penned one of the most famous love letters ever written. In “A Dialogue between the Head and the Heart,” Jefferson wrote to Cosway about how his desires to be with her were in conflict with his knowledge that doing so would go against his honor. That’s right, love even got the best of the great unimpressed Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, a man who would have simply said, “Meh,” in reference to the a sunrise over the Eiffel Tower, if it had been around while he was there, was reduced to pouring his heart out to a woman he knew he couldn’t be with. Because love makes you do crazy things. Even TJ. Although to be fair, in that letter he reasoned himself into honor winning over desire. He wrote more longing letters to Maria, but he held out from giving in to love. If Lloyd Dobbler had followed suit, he would have saved his triceps a workout. And Jack might have stayed alive. Of course then Lloyd wouldn’t have ended up with Diane. But Jack might not have ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic. You see, sometimes you need to do crazy things for love. And sometimes you need to be Thomas Jefferson. The trick is figuring out when to do which, isn’t it?

This Day has been Marked.

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