Who can explain the ways of the human heart? We often fall in love for no apparent reason.

       The ways of the human spleen are just as mysterious. Last week, I wrote about what I call unreasonable antipathies. These are things that just make us splenetic, things we fall in hate with, even though they are easily ignored.

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       My list of unreasonable antipathies includes mourning doves and Argus C3 cameras. Why? Who knows? You might as well ask Jay Alvey why he doesn’t like a type of electric guitar called the Gibson SG.

       “I hate that guitar,” wrote Jay, of Gaithersburg. “When I see one in person or a picture of one it gives me a bad feeling. I know it doesn’t make any sense.”

       Jay purchased his first electric guitar in 1965 at Washington Music Center — what everyone calls Chuck Levin’s — when it was on H Street NW, before it moved to Wheaton.

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       “I actually bought it from Chuck Levin,” Jay said. “The first guitar he showed me was the SG. I hated it then and still do today.”

       The SG — it stands for “solid guitar” — was the model Gibson introduced in 1961 as a replacement for the famed Les Paul. Jay wound up buying a cherry red Gibson ES 335. (The ES stands for “electric Spanish,” but you might call it an HG: hollow guitar.)

       “A beautiful guitar,” Jay wrote of his ES 335. “I wish I kept it but sold it in the ’70s. I guess maybe there’s another column on things you regret selling.”

       Amy Patterson of Lake Stevens, Wash., has a hatred for variegated foliage.

       “It isn’t as deeply visceral as it was when I was younger, but irritates me nonetheless,” she wrote.

       No need to soft-pedal your unreasonable antipathy, Amy. This is a safe space.

       Eva St. Clair’s father hates cake forks, those utensils with short, fat tines, one of which has a cutting edge.

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       “We inherited a set when I was a little kid and they ended up mixed in with the other cutlery,” wrote Eva, of Silver Spring. Whenever one wound up next to Eva’s father’s plate, he would recoil.

       “My best guess is that because Dad likes to take large bites of food, the cake fork slows and limits his consumption,” she wrote.

       His unreasonable antipathy motivated his four children to set his place with a cake fork whenever possible, “just for the fun of watching him take his seat, notice and then pick up the offending piece of cutlery, saying with disgust, as if it had personally insulted him, ‘A cake fork!’ and then getting out of his seat to go to the drawer to trade it for a less offensive utensil.

       “I don't think he ever realized we did it on purpose, even though it happened at pretty nearly every dinnertime for years.”

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       Last summer Eva visited her father with her children, who did not believe anyone could be so picky about a utensil.

       “I purposefully set his place with the cake fork and sure enough, even 25 years later he still hates cake forks,” she wrote.

       Martha Jaffe of Gaithersburg does not like bathroom air fresheners that smell like any kind of food. She recoils at the scent of cinnamon apple pie, oven-baked chocolate chip cookies, spiced cider and the like in a bathroom.

       Wrote Martha: “The only air fresheners that should be in the bathroom are ones like Ocean Breeze, Mountain Sunrise, Linens on the Line, etc.”

       Chris Hegemann of Falls Church often feels unreasonable antipathy while playing Yahtzee. She started playing the dice game six years ago to distract her during her successful chemotherapy treatment. She still plays today to relax.

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       “However, I get very annoyed at a particular roll sequence — when I need a particular number with two dice left to roll,” she wrote. “Let’s say a 5. Invariably, I roll a 2 and 3 or a 1 and 4. Annoys the heck out of me — just feels like I’m being taunted.”

       Finally, the District’s Thomas M. Sneeringer said you can’t write about unreasonable antipathy without mentioning Duke basketball.

       “Sure, there are lots of actual reasons to root against them but then there are lots of people like my late Dad,” Thomas wrote. “He was not much of a sports fan but once, while visiting him in his nursing home, I flipped on the TV and Duke was playing. ‘I don’t like Duke,’ he immediately said. ‘Why not?’ I asked. He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I don’t know. I just don’t.’”

       And that, in a nutshell, is the perfect description of unreasonable antipathy.

       Tomorrow: Defenders of the mourning dove fight back.