Serious Thinks Thought Here

First of all, let’s get one thing straight. I have never been ON an imaginary girlfriend, as the title would suggest. That is not to say I haven’t dated a few. It’s just that none would even let me get to second base, let alone get on top of them.

But I digress—and in a particularly disturbing way, I might add. But in any event, it seems that some All-American foosball player from Notre Dame Cook University is involved in a scandal concerning one imaginary girlfriend. Even more amazing is the fact that this kid was a candidate to win the Heisenberg Trophy (for excellence in physics, I imagine). Which begs the question…

Why would someone like this need to invent a girlfriend?

I mean, he obviously has both the jock and nerd categories pretty much locked up.

But do you want to know what is even sadder than that? How about the fact that his imaginary girlfriend was terminally ill? Where does one go to get treatment for THAT, I ask you? And before you say an imaginary oncologist, estimate just how many such programs might exist in the entire U.S. It can’t be more than 2 or 3 at the most. She was a goner from the moment she was first diagnosed, I say.

And so the question remains: How does a physicist-athlete, with more apostrophies in his name than letters, soldier on—both in the lab and over the foosball table—without his make-believe loved one cheering from the sidelines? He’s not, that’s how. No, he will likely leave the fields of science and competitive barroom games and eke out a measly living on the royalties from his autobiography and biopic.

Another American tragedy, that is.