Covalent Bond
n.
a moment of sudden involvement in a stranger’s personal life— rushing over to break up a fight, helping a teary-eyed parent struggling with a stroller, righting someone’s bike after a bad fall—that shatters the invisible glass box that usually surrounds us in public, the one we prefer to pretend is impenetrable, which somehow renders us unable to speak.
From covalence, literally “shared strength.” In chemistry, a covalent bond describes the force that holds two atoms together upon sharing a loose outer shell of electron pairs. Pronounced “ko-vey-luhnt bond.”
