Dr. Horton entered the room and took a deep breath. “There’s been a slight mix-up. We accidentally replaced some of your plasma with plasma.”

Brownell frowned. “I’m not following.”

Across the hall, nurses rushed into another room.

“You’re familiar with the plasma in your blood?” Dr. Horton said.

“Not really. I know there is such a thing.”

“Well, this plasma is different.”

“Different like it’s from a different person?”

“Different like it’s a completely different substance with the same name.”

Almost a year ago, my wife surprised me with a Fitbit for my birthday. Perhaps she had noticed me glancing at hers longingly, checking in on her weekly challenge stats, monitoring the rises and falls in her heart rate, or surreptitiously slipping it on late at night when she was in bed and had left it to charge. The power I felt when wearing it, if only for a few short minutes, was intoxicating. I, a mere mortal, could count my own steps and measure the pace of my heart!

So you’ve met a cynic. You find him insufferable, but you can’t avoid him because your best friend thinks he’s “kinda cute in an ugly way.” Fear not, for we have supplied a fool-proof method to cure him of his prickly outlook on life.

Journalist #1: I’m here at the royal wedding of King Henry XIII and Catherine of Parr. Your highness, it’s an honor to talk to you at this beautiful affair.

King Henry: Thank you, I’m glad you could make it. Did you have some questions for your publication?

Journalist #1: I indeed did, I’ll rattle through them real quick.

King Henry: Sounds good.

Journalist #1: So this is your sixth wedding, correct?

King Henry: Yes, this time I’ve found love for real.

Journalist #1: Do you really believe that?

n 2003, I accidentally dated an alcoholic. He came as an accessory on my Prius. I got to know handsome Johnny O. (not his whole name) while I awaited the delivery he promised in four days. And during the four weeks I was dropping in on the dealership to check on my anticipated Prius, he began courting me in a car man kind of way, demonstrating how his smart key could open my vehicle without even touching it, showing me how to change the oil, change a tire, hot wire a car, skills I’d never use, but I liked the way he was teaching me. He would worry, he said, if I were abandoned along a roadside somewhere: fearful, cheerless, Johnny O.-less. This man rolled the odometer back on my feminism thirty years. Single and celibate, I suddenly got hormonal, helpless and girly.