Sometimes it’s hard to make light of tragedies. But sometimes “tragedy” can be a bit of a misnomer. This weekend we were treated to the heartwarming (you’ll get that one in a minute) story of a man who simply loved too hard. The story on KFOR’s site doesn’t have many details, but here they are, with some paraphrasing: A man went to 7-11, where the woman he loved works. Once he got to the parking lot, he called the store from his cell phone and asked them to “look in the parking lot”. Once their attention was on him, the man proceeded to douse himself with two gallons of gasoline, and set himself on fire. All in the name of love. Damn, dude.

First of all, I’m obviously too much of a pussy to even post a real “man on fire” photo, so I went with the Lego re-enactment pic. You’re welcome. Second, uh…what the freckles is wrong with this guy? Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a bit of a romantic (ret.) and I’ve gone way out of my way to make my feelings known to a super lucky girl or two. But you know how I did it? I bought them flowers. I made an adorable cheesecake or two from scratch. I wrote a beautifully melodic song.

I know what you’re thinking, and it really doesn’t matter how the previous statements made me appear.  The last time I had to worry about how a girl felt about me, Arnold Schwarzenegger was still just a shitty actor. But you know what I didn’t do? I didn’t cause myself great bodily harm. I’m guessing this guy most likely just lost the girl. But I can’t figure out where this decision came from. Was it to impress her, cause her pain, or to just show off? Because here’s the bad news: He didn’t die. Well, as of “press time”, he was still clinging to painful, crunchy life with third degree burns over half of his body. Am I the only one who thinks he went too far? I’m not talking about setting himself on fire with the likely goal of a very public suicide. I’m talking about trying too hard. Girls hate that. I think that’s my biggest problem with the entire story. Just play it cool, baby.

Actually, scratch that. My biggest problem is how I actually learned of the story. I, like 68% of everybody, don’t watch the ten o’clock news anymore. I honestly heard about this story because I follow local news goddess Joleen Chaney’s tweets. Ok, when you put it into a sentence like that, it sounds like you’d be a fool not to do the same. But I can’t decide if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that Twitter told me about news in the town where I live. Anyway, here’s the bottom line: If you lose the girl, killing yourself to spite her doesn’t work. You know what it does? It drives her straight into the arms of the rich guy with perfect abs she’s now banging, bringing them closer through your misguided attempt at hurting her. So, nicely done man. I understand where you were coming from. We’ve all wanted to do the same. But not really. So it looks like romance isn’t dead…but it probably wishes it were right about now.