Congratulations on Swimming the English Channel!

Carey swore she’d never be able to love anyone who was a coward, and after you backed out of that bar fight you knew you’d have to do something great to live it down. She’s ignored all of your overtures over the last month and a half, all of the flowers and letters. After all, they just reaffirmed that you were the sensitive man that made her feel alive. They didn’t show any of the backbone she needed to feel safe with you.

That’s why you’ve been racking your brain trying to come up with a way to win her back for the last week. You know you can’t handle yourself in a fight, so that option was out. Joining the military would be way too extreme, and your advanced myopia would probably exempt you from service anyways.

That’s why, after much soul searching, you decided on testing yourself against the elements.

Living out in the wild by yourself seemed like way too big a time commitment, and scaling Everest, while doable, was just so expensive that it wasn’t feasible. Leaping in and out of a frozen river wouldn’t impress anyone, and swimming across a lake just wasn’t enough for Carey. She needed something monumental to prove that you were tough enough to love her.

That’s why you finally settled on swimming the Channel. It’s a classic, iconic gesture of human endurance which requires relatively little endurance. Your body fat, in this case, would actually be a boon rather than a disadvantage, and you’ve known how to swim since you were three, so there’s no trouble there.

You’ll spend a week and a half training as hard as you can until you can readily swim one lap at your community center’s pool, before you buy your ticket to England and text Carey that you’ll see her on the coast of France.

Then you’ll dive into the channel and doggy paddle for your life.

You’ll almost get lost a few times, and it’ll take you an unprecedented day and a half to reach the French shore. We’re honestly not sure how you’ll survive, but you will. And you’ll crawl out on to the far shore to see Carey waiting there with a man on her arm.

She’ll introduce him as Gary, her new boyfriend. You’ll recognize him as the asshole who insulted her and almost beat you up in the bar a month ago. Turns out they got to talking, found out they had a lot in common and summarily started dating.

She’ll apologize profusely and tell you how impressed she is by the fact that you swam the English Channel for her. She’ll tell you that if she was single she’d totally jump your bones, but Gary’s the jealous type so there’s just no way it’ll happen now.

Gary will put his arm around her and give her a little hug and a smooch and say “Damn straight,” and then smack her ass. Carey will giggle.

But you’ll barely see them by this point. Instead you’ll be walking straight ahead, eyes unfocussed, exhausted by your ordeal, looking for the nearest bar. You won’t even have the energy to feel exhausted. You’ll just want to be away from that terrible place.

C’est l’amour, friend. Congratulations on swimming the English Channel. If it makes you feel any better, you were all over the news as being presumed dead for the last day and a half, so the odds of you meeting an adorable French girl who’s impressed by your survival are pretty good.

Also Gary and Carey are going to die in a car crash when Gary drives on the wrong side of the road in London next week after telling Carey that “he’ll show these limey fucks how it’s done.” You can totally skip the funeral without karmic backlash since Carey was such a raving bitch to you.