The following parable is a story about requited love. People don’t write many of these. Unrequited love pays much better, as long as the love is requited at some point. This seems dishonest. Wouldn’t that be more of a delayed requitement love story?

A boy and a girl met and fell in love at a party one night when one of the boy’s friends vomited near the girl. Let’s call the boy John and the girl Julie. John’s friend’s name isn’t important, just his vomit. We’ll call the vomit “Harold.”

When John’s friend started Harolding all over the carpet next to Julie, she squealed and grimaced. John is an unusually perceptive young man and noticed Julie’s disgust as his friend heaved up streams of Harold.

John said to his friend, “Dude, not cool.”

John’s interjection did not stop the Harold from coming, but it did have an effect on Julie. Revulsion left her face, and it became moony. She had been longing for a young man capable of this kind of chivalry for years.

John and Julie introduced themselves as they moved to a spot away from the Harold. They told each other hilarious public Harolding stories about their friends and, once they were more comfortable with each other, told their own embarrassing Harold stories.

John and Julie made out that night, once they had run out of Harold stories. John didn’t even try to get to second base — that’s how Julie knew he liked her. John knew he liked Julie because he was able to kiss her without being grossed out by the lone, pinkish chunk of his friend’s Harold stuck to Julie’s shoe that she was unaware of, but which he couldn’t stop thinking about.

After what seemed to be a socially appropriate amount of time (11 days), but felt like an agonizing eternity for John and Julie, the couple made their love digitally official. They did this by changing their romantic affiliations to “In a Relationship” on Facebook.

Soon, John and Julie’s friends were constantly being confronted with pictures of the two making out in various settings. In all of these photos, only one of Julie’s arms was engaged in the kissing embrace, while the other extended into the foreground, her hand out of frame. This led everybody to the conclusion that she was the couple’s own photographer.

Their friends also had to try making sense of cryptic life-status updates. “John wishes this morning could have lasted for forever.” “Julie is just ... floating.”

Everybody wanted to Harold when they saw these.

After what seemed like a lifetime of nauseating self-promoted romance — which actually only lasted three weeks — John and Julie went from “In a Relationship” to “It’s Complicated.” It seems they each made out with someone else at a party. This happened at separate parties, but, as if directed by fate, they both cheated on the other.

The moral of this story: The application of a well timed “Dude, not cool” has more power than we can fully comprehend. Perhaps it could have saved John and Julie if their friends had spoken up.

— — Unglesbee is an Overland Park senior in creative writing and economics.