(Jennifer C.) + ( Muddy W.) = Mark Z.

Subtitle = Lewis Carroll Logic

Paranoia means never having to say you're lonely

because there is always someone close behind you.

LOVE STORY had a famous tagline: Love means never having to say you're sorry. But I will not apologize for the corruption of that sentence.

In 1970, when the film was released, paranoia was paramount to the counter-culture while LOVE STORY was emblematic of the popular culture. Many film critics gave it four stars but students at the Lewis Carroll School gave it four hankies: LOVE STORY was a four-star tearjerker. But we loved it just the same. In the movie, a rich boy falls in love with a poor girl but his ultra-wealthy father threatens to disown him. Then Death makes a guest appearance.

Because the poor girl was an aspiring musician, Professor McKinley Morganfield financed a field trip to a movie theater in a poor neighborhood. Students had to pay their own way into the theater but the Professor paid for the popcorn and transportation. Our campus was in Piscataway, New Jersey. The field trippers rode a school bus to East Piscataway. Thirty students sang along to "Got My Mojo Working" while the Professor's alter ego, Muddy Waters, sang lead.

He also drove the bus.

The theater was in a black neighborhood but the predominantly white Lewis Carroll students had too much fun on the bus to be afraid. The greater fun, however, was when people in the LOVE STORY audience added spicy and loud dialog to the action on the screen.

Moments before the romantic scene where Jennifer Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw) utters the famous words to Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan Oneill), Professor Morganfield left his seat to get us more popcorn. No sooner did Jennifer embrace Oliver, telling him that Love means never having to say you're sorry when a thundering baritone voice arose from the back of the theater.

Paranoia means never having to say you're lonely 
because there is always someone close behind you.

Professor M denied responsibility for the exclamation. Technically, he was correct: the baritone voice unmistakably belonged to his alter ego, Muddy W.

LOVE STORY was held over at the East Piscataway RKO Theater for one month. Every Lewis Carroll student (and faculty member) saw it at least twice and everyone of us knew exactly when and exactly what to shout out!

On behalf of the entire campus, I present another shout out: Thank you, Jennifer.

Generations of students at my alma mater were exposed to the campus plaque immortalizing the corrupted words of a poor girl in love with a rich boy.

The plaque was planted in the Wonderland Velour Garden. Alongside the plaque is a miniature statue of Alice. That is what she looked like after drinking something from a bottle labelled "Drink Me." It made her body become very small ." However, a life-size statue of Alice–identical to the one in New York's Central Park–is situated in front of the student quad.

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What follows explains why the title of this blogpost is in the form of an equation.

In 1996, the Lewis Carroll School enrolled a twelve-year old boy. In his dorm room, this tweenager had more computer equipment than clothing. His IQ had four digits but during his senior year, an administrator had him exiled from the school after a "vandalism" incident. The boy wonder had merely removed the fabled paranoia quote, very neatly replacing it with a quote of his own. He was also accused of distorting little Alice.

Unfortunately, The administrator was the Red Queen who believed in pronouncing sentence before determining verdict. "Off with his head!" she exclaimed. "Off with his head!" she repeated.

The boy with the four-digit IQ escaped to Newark. There he lived in a ramshackle garage for three years, sleeping on a bed made entirely from computer codes. After his eighteenth birthday, he enrolled in another school. Coincidentally, it was the same school attended by Oliver Barrett IV and Erich Segal, screenwriter and author of the novel, LOVE STORY.

The boy's name was Mark Zuckerberg.

He migrated from the Lewis Carroll School to Harvard University. For more information about his Harvard years, see Social Network. For more information about his Lewis Carroll years, see below but please put on your thinking cap before doing so.

Think of what happens when "something" goes through the looking glass (or mirror) and pretend that something is you.

When you look in a mirror, the reflection is reversed. If you raise your right hand, your reflection raises its left hand–and vice versa. In another words, right becomes left and left becomes right but height remains height.*

Now, please use the highest powers of your imagination and think what happens when a “word statement” goes through the looking glass: some of it gets reversed but–analagous to height-remaining-height–some wording is unchanged. Other words may be added.

Mark Zuckerberg did exactly what the Professor did, thirty years before him. Both took a page out of the Lewis Carroll novel because the second half of Alice’s Adventures in wonderland was entitled “Through The Looking Glass.”

To wit: on a movie screen Jennifer C. gave a beautiful definition to the positive concept called "Love." Immediately after hearing what she said, Muddy W. was inspired to redefine a negative concept called "Paranoia." But three decades later, Mark Z. was inspired to define something which reversed the concept of paranoia.

*Notice that Alice's height has not remained the same. Just like when the storybook Alice eats all the cake, the "Zuckerberg Alice" has grown so tall that her unseen feet got buried in the Velour Garden.