*A Summary of Max Schulman's "Love Is a Fallacy"

This story is about this 18-year-old boy. Very keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute, and astute. Not a lot of men his age were as intellectual as him. Take for example his roommate, Petey Bellows. A complete dumbbell.

This one afternoon the guy found Petey lying on his bed with some weird look on his face. He immediately thought it was appendicitis. But to his surprise, it was something less then that.

“Raccoon”, he mumbled.

He wanted a raccoon coat because everyone else had it! Such a faddist. He kept whining about how he should have known that it was going to come back in style.

"All the Big Men on Campus are wearing them”, he said continuing his complaints. As for the guy, he didn’t care about being in the swim with everybody else.

Petey would give up anything for a raccoon coat maybe even Polly Espy, this girl he went out with who “excited his emotions.” It just so happened the guy knew where to get a raccoon coat. His dad had one when he was younger and it’s now kept in their attic.

He wanted her and Petey wanted the coat. It was a fair deal. He could give the coat to Petey in exchange with a date with Polly. Not long after he told Petey about what he wanted, Petey agreed.

That evening the guy took Polly out on their first date. Just great, another complete dumbbell. But he though to himself: It is, after all, easier to make a beautiful dumb girl smart than to make an ugly smart girl beautiful. They first went out for dinner, to a movie, then he took her home. Though her choice of words like delish, marvy and sensaysh, wasn’t as delightful as how she looked, he was still determined to make her the woman of his dreams. He had to teach her how to think. On their next date, he wanted to have a talk, about logic. He taught her about the different fallacies. Dicto Simpliciter, Hasty Generalization, Post Hoc and Contradictory Premises were the first few fallacies he discussed on their second date which left Polly confused after every explanation. He was ready to give up until he thought to himself that if he does, then he just wasted one evening. Why not waste another evening, maybe she’d get it the next time. Though he was running out of hope, he gave it another shot.

The next evening still under the same oak tree he taught about Ad Misericordiam, False Analogy and Hypothesis Contrary. Same old reactions. Still a dumbbell. When he taught her the last fallacy, Poisoning the Well, to his surprise she was able to get it. She was able to answer his questions right. It took him five strenuous night to get Polly to think! And he was proud that he finally has the girl of his dreams. His job was done. She was worthy of him at last. He started to express how he really felt for her, but to his shocker, she used all the fallacies she learned against him. He professed his love for her, but she still used them against him. He had no way out. He couldn’t believe his eyes that this girl was out smarting him. Though he was mortified by everything, he finally asked her if she would go steady with him. Polly, without even a second thought, said “no”. “Why?”, he asked her. The reason was because she promised Petey Bellows that she’d go steady with him that afternoon. He was taken aback.

Petey Bellows? After he promised and made a deal?
How could he?! Well, it wasn’t his fault he had a raccoon coat!