Naming children is a serious matter.

I had an aunt named Hazel. Another named Connie (short for Constance). My mother was named Helen. I grew up with girls named Linda and Carol and Mary and Patty (short for Patricia). Our mothers had names like Mildred and Dorothy and Louise and Edith and Edna. Their mothers were named Bernice and Hattie and Violet and Agnes.

Where did all those names go?

It's easy to say that they disappeared, but they're still in our collective consciousness, stored on the hard drive of our national memory. Some come back; others never do. Emma and Emily are popular again, but I don't hold out much hope for Doris and Dorothy.

The naming of children is a never-ending peek into our popular culture. I remember when Heather became the nom-de-jour (pardon my bad French, but you get the point). Then came Misty and -- in the hippie years -- Sunshine and Rainbow (I'm not kidding). Drugs brought on a serious weirdness in naming children: Frank Zappa, as we all know, named one kid Moon Unit and the other one Dweezil. What's-her-name of Jefferson Airplane named her kid God (though I think she may have later come to her senses and changed that). Cher named her daughter Chastity, and I have no idea how that worked out.

More recently, a movie star named her daughter Apple, but I don't see any residual effect from that. Another one named her daughter Mabel; I predict that one may be in for a ressurection.

Note that I'm mainly considering girls' names, because -- as with fashion -- women in our society often control the trends in popular culture, including the naming of children (unless some guy has a family name he insists on passing down). If I'm mistaken about this, I apologize in advance, but my impression is that it's true.

[Note, too, that I'm not considering the names of people of color or various ethnicities: the names they come up with are so striking and original -- just look at the first names of pro football players, not to mention recording artists -- that I can't begin to understand how they choose them and so won't even attempt to decipher their reasoning, but the rules I spell out later on apply to them, too.]

There are plenty of mens' names that are also disappearing: Herb and George and Roy and Willard and Virgil and Chester and Lester and Hubert and Francis and Gilbert and Vern, and on and on. But there are so many enduring mens' names -- James and Robert and David et al -- that the newer ones, like Jason and Kyle and Aaron and Seamus, seem new to us even though they often hark back to older times. Men's names, like men's fashions, just get re-treaded, from time to time to time. What's the last absolutely new man's name you can recall? The equivalent of Heather or Misty or Apple? Josh? That's short for Joshua, from the Bible. Liam? I suspect it has its roots in Irish or Scottish ancestry. Adam? Oh please. Men don't like to stand out from the crowd, whether it's their clothes or their names. Just name us and get on with it and don't be weird, okay? Jeez!

I went to high school with a girl named Edwina. I assume that's short for a man's name: Edwin (another disappearing name, along with Ed and Eddie). She was beautiful but always had to contend with guys making fun of her name, something usually involving "weiner," as in "Ed's weiner." Gotta love those guys, no?

Be careful what you name your children. They have to live with the results: you don't.

I think it's fine to go back in (family) history and dig out a great name, but be sure it's something your daughter or son can live with. Horace used to be a polular name for guys, as did Nathan. One has survived; the other hasn't. Why? The way it sounds? The way it rolls off the tongue? I don't have a clue. Do you? I'm not saying you shouldn't name your child anything you want. I'm just saying be careful.

Who would have thought that Emma would become fashionable again? Oh wait, wasn't that the name of a Jane Austen novel? (And my grandmother's name.) But who would have guessed that Jane Austen would become the rage again in the 20th/21st century? And what about Jane? I think that's becoming popular again. In my youth, it symbolized near-nothingness: Plain Jane.

Okay, so here are my rules for naming children, and they apply to whites and non-whites alike:

1) Don't name your child something he or she is going to have to spell, to everyone, for the rest of his or her life.

2) Don't name your child something you think is cute because it's in fashion, because fashions change pretty fast.

3) Don't name your child something that's a common name but that you've given a weird spelling. (see #1).

4) Don't name your child something you can't explain later, when he or she asks about it.

5) Don't name your child something YOU wanted to be named: he or she isn't you and is going to grow up in a totally different version of society, where that name may be considered odd.

When we name our kids, we saddle them with our own predilictions, our own eccentricities, at a particular time in our lives: namely, when we're young and rebellious and inventive, not giving a thought to what our kids are going to have to deal with later, in school and looking for jobs, when they will to explain and spell those odd names we gave them over and over, ad nauseum.

On one end of the spectrum are all these disappearing names. Should Irma be saved? How about Earlene? (I had a girlfriend named that in junior high.) What about Irene? Or Sharon? Harriet?
Minnie? Pearl? I'm betting on Martha and Faye making comebacks. Maybe Pearl. (Hey, wasn't that Janis Joplin's chosen nickname for herself?)

On the other end are the names and spellings we make up because we think they're unique, and because we think our kids are unique. But you know what? Our kids don't want to be thought of as unique (i.e., different). They want to fit in. It's not about you, okay? Or me. It's about them. Giving them the best chance to succeed starts with annointing them with names they can spell and pronounce and be proud of, not ones they have to spell and explain and defend.

As Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

Your child, by any other name, would, too. But why complicate things?

In the world we live in, a name, like a face, means more than it should. But that's the way it is.

Let's have a REAL spelling bee.

Aren't you tired of watching or hearing about kids -- and it's always kids -- spelling words you've never heard of to win scholarships? Teenagers who spell some odd scientific word that no one has ever used in written or spoken form?

How about a spelling bee that involves real words we all have to use every day in our personal or business correspondence? Words that we stumble over and wonder about as we're trying to write intelligent emails to friends and colleagues and clients? Don't we all have to go to the dictionary occasionaly?

Did you notice that I mis-spelled that last word? It's spelled "occasionally." I left off the second "l". Did you catch it? How about if I spelled the word "oceanagraphy,"meaning the study of oceans. Would you have caught the mis-spelling? It should be "oceanography", an "o" instead of an "a". On the same page of Webster's Ninth (the dictionary I have on my desk), you'll find other words that we're all familar with but may not know how to spell: obstinate, occlude, obsolescence. I'm betting you know what most of those words mean, but did you know how to spell them? A couple of pages over is this word: "oleandomycin". Guess which one is most likely to show up in a typical National Spelling Bee? Duh.

My point is that we all have to struggle with spelling common words all the time, and there's no need to introduce weird spellings into these national contests. It's hard enough for most of us just to spell the words we have to deal with every day!

Suppose we announce a national spelling bee -- open to everyone -- to be held a week from whenever: not enough time for anyone to study the dictionary. Suppose it's sponsored by some big entity -- say, TIME or NEWSWEEK -- and offers at least $10,000 as a top prize. And suppose the trusted source for answers isn't a dictionary but is a widely-read magazine, like TIME or NEWSWEEK, or maybe a newspaper like THE NEW YORK TIMES: a source that uses words we all know but have trouble spelling. In other words, none of those oddball scientific words that no one knows or ever uses. Common words that we all mis-spell every day.

I just flipped open my dictionary page to the letter "P". We have "pandemonium", meaning a "wild uproar". We've all heard the word, but did you know how to spell it? I'm a pretty good speller but may have stumbled on that one. How about "parallelogram," which some of us remember from our high school trig class. How many "l"s did you think it had? It comes from the word "parallel," which means something like running alongside, in the same direction of, but is likely mis-spelled by most of us, most of the time.

You get the picture, right?

These national spelling bees have nothing to do with the difficulties most of us have in trying to spell the words we use all the time. They're concerned with strange and esoteric spellings of words nobody ever uses, and that's why the winners are always kids who have spent countless hours studying dictionaries, probably often at the urging of parents.

Those kids should have been out playing sports or making friends. The real spellers among us, those of us who have to use the language every day in our lives and in our jobs, are the ones who should be in those contests and who should be rewarded. Our employers should give us a raise if we enter and win a spelling contest, at least if our job involves any kind of writing or editing.

Try this one: How do you spell that word that means "destruction of an employer's property"?
The word is "sabotage". Ask a teenager to spell "sabotage", which all us adults know or at least have heard. The teen has probably never heard it, and he/she is unlikely to spell it right without months or years of studying a dictionary. What about "recon, I'm almost sure. He or she may guess and get it right but only after a study of the dictionary. You and I have heard it, don't know how to spell it, but know to go look it up.

What about a military word meaning "an exploratory military survey of enemy territory": the word is "reconnaissance". Two n's and two s's. Did you know that? Would that have stumped you in a spelling contest? I suspect it may have stumped lots of teen spellers. And the rest of us, too. But it's a legitimate word, used frequently when talking about the army.

Again, my point: we don't have to come up with oddball scientific terms to challenge spellers. Our language is replete with words that we're all familiar with and that we sometimes have to spell. (On the same page is "recommend," which may provoke many spellers to put a second "c" into, or the even more ominous "recommendation,"which, just by its length, almost cries out for another "c".)

Here's another one -- sorry, but I can't resist once I get started -- from a different letter of the dictionary. What is the word that means "a chrystalline compound . . . several hundred times sweeter than cane sugar and is used as a calorie-free sweetener"? You know the answer but have no idea how to spell it, right? The answer is "saccharin." But did you know that there's a variation? Just add an "e" and it means "overly or sickishly sweet," an adjective that drama critics often use in reviewing plays.

Not to belabor the point, but our language is so rich that we don't need to look to science for hard words to spell: they're everywhere. And they're words that we all know and even use every day. Suppose you rent one of those super-long cars for your daughter or son for his or her prom. How do you spell the name of that? Quick now -- think! Starts with "l" -- what comes next?

The answer is "limousine." Did you know that it's also the name of a certain kind of cattle?

Our language contains plenty of words that could stump even the smartest of us. We don't have to resort to the weirdnesses (good word, no?) of the current national spelling bees.

Let's have a National Spelling Contest, open to anyone of any age. And let's say that the ultimate source is not a dictionary but "common usage" as defined by a popular magazine or newspaper that most of us read. In other words, let's limit the list to words that a smart American might use in his or her daily life and correspondence.

Let's forget about the prodigies who studied dictionaries when they should have been dating or throwing fisbees or whatever and find out, once and for all, who the true natural spellers among us really are. I'm up for the challenge -- are you?

One last quick one: what is that word that means "recklessly extravagant"? It starts with a "p" and is in the Bible. Think "son." Ah yes -- but before I confirm your answer -- how to do you spell it? Ready? One, two, three: prodigal. Think a teen whiz would have known that?

Not without weeks to study the dictionary.

Let's have a REAL spelling bee, okay?

My money is not -- God bless 'em -- on the kids.

Nature is cruel, and there's no getting around it.

We all love to think of waterfalls and mountains and all those vistas served up just for our enjoyment, right? Not to mention little kittens and meerkats, perched upright, looking around, almost human, or our loyal dogs, lapping up whatever affection we give them.

Nature sweet and accommodating, in our control and serving us, bringing us joy.

But that's not what nature is, and we all know it. Dogs do bite children, sometimes horribly, and even our pet cats can scratch us. And then there's the hiker who steps off the path and plunges to his death, the swimmer in beautiful waters who drowns, the skier who triggers an avalanche that kills not just him or her but friends, too.

Nature doesn't care about you or me. Nature is what is. It's what existed before we ever appeared on the scene. It's rocks and rivers and mountains and valleys. It's a Kansas tornado or a flood in some Asian country where too many people live right down by the sea because it's the only way they can make a living. It's the pet who kills and eats a bird that was just a morning before singing in a tree out front.

Nature couldn't care less about you or me. It does what it's programmed to do. We aren't even a blip on its screen.

Our job is to respect nature and live by her rules. And what are those rules?

I think we're still trying to figure that out. Assume that nature is, as I said, what is, so let's go with that. Don't assume that you're going to get some special allowance just because you've taken a course in alpine ecology or that you're a certified ski instructor. At any moment, nature may un-leash a whole world of trouble on you. And you're no match for it.

Don't think that your sweet kitty isn't going to show up on your doorstep with a mouse in its mouth.

So let's take it in that direction: nature as sustenance. It's how we survive, right? We eat not just the crops of the earth but other creatures.

I don't know about you -- and I'm a lover of steaks (especially rib-eyes) -- but I find all that a little creepy. Why do we have to kill other animals to eat? Who thought that up?

Back up a few millennia -- maybe more than a few -- way back to when the laws of the universe were being written. If you'd been in charge, would you have said that every species would have to terrorize and then kill and eat another species?

The basic problem is that this is the way nature works: someone is always killing and eating someone. Usually nature is just indifferent; it kills us when we're in the wrong place at the wrong time. But this particular set-up -- pitting up against each other, to the death -- seems actually kind of cruel. Is this really the best way to keep our species alive? And it's not just us humans, who love our steaks. It goes all the way down to the tiniest organisms: someone is always eating someone, and that means that someone is always being eaten.

Yuck!

[NOTE: I'm well aware that a good many humans -- and many species of animals -- eat only vegetables or grass or whatever, but I'll bet there are more who eat other living things.]

I'm not a religious person, though I think of myself as spiritual/mystical: something strange is going on, but I don't know what it is (and neither do you). But I think there are systems at work in the universe, pre-ordained --by what hand we can't begin to know -- and I question this one on moral grounds.

The stars and planets and nebulae exist and function according to the laws of physics -- so far as we understand them -- but something is seriously wrong down here in the world of biology, what we know as life. We've got a lot of needless suffering going on down here, lots more pain and suffering than is necessary. And I'm not talking about man-made suffering -- crime and wars and abuse, etc. I'm talking about this inherent need to kill and eat each other. Something is just wrong about that, don't you think?

Why can't all animals feed on plants, which we assume have no souls and don't suffer when devoured? Why all this barbarity? All this pain and suffering just so we can have meat for dinner? Is this desire for the flesh of another animal built into us as humans, and are the vegetatians among us just exceptions? I don't know. Do you?

What would Jesus think about this? So far as I know, he never spoke about it. Why not?

Here's a letter I would write to Him:

Dear Jesus, please tell your Dad that we have a problem down here. We're trying not to keep killing each other, at least some of us. But we still have this problem about food. Those cows and pigs and chickens, cooked in a crockpot or over a long-roast barbeque pit, swathed with the right sauces or rubs, still excite our taste buds. What's that all about? How are we supposed to respect the rights of other species when some of them, to put it bluntly, taste so good?

Can we get an update on this? Some clarification? Hello? Anybody listening Up There?

In the meantime, I think my steak is sizzling, and it does smell good.

Time means nothing to spiders.

I recently started watching a spider in my basement window.

I was fascinated. First there's the creature itself. How unlikely! Eight legs! What's that all about? And then there's the web it spins: all that delicate lacework but strong enough to snare wayward insects. Strong but astonishingly pliant, almost invisible -- beautiful with the right light behind it -- so fine that the slightest bug step on it triggers vibrations that bring the spider scurrying out like a kid hearing the pizza driver pull up out front.

Dinner is served!

Only it didn't happen. I watched and I watched, and nothing appeared in the web, and the spider stayed exactly where he/she was, at the mouth of the web. Waiting. Just waiting.

And I watched. Not all the time, but I kept checking back every few hours. Nothing. No movement whatsoever. It's like the spider must have been in some kind of trance. A self-induced coma. It never moved so much as a leg in more than two days.

Then something happened.

One morning a small insect -- a gnat or something gnat-size -- appeared in the web, trapped there, wiggling, writhing, stuck. On and off, I watched it struggle for the better part of a day before it finally seemed to give up and was still, as if ready for what was to come.

And, of course, what came was the spider. Sometime during the night. The next morning there was no insect in the web, and the spider was stationed, as before, in its lair, waiting, just waiting.

What is life to a spider? It lives a real life, full of drama and maybe even a primitive kind of love. After all, from what I remember from biology classes, it's catching prey to feed its young. I seem to recall that it anesthetizes its prey with a bite -- what must that feel like? Ouch! And then its offspring feed on that (still living?) food source. So the spider is looking after its children, right?

And sometime in there, the spider had sex. What is spider sex like? Does the female enjoy it or just endure it? She must want it, welcome it, or she wouldn't present herself as ready. I don't think rape exists in the animal world, but I may be mistaken. My assumption has always been that the males know when the females want it, and it's up the females to decide which males get to do it with them. I welcome any clarification from biologists, especially those specializing in spiders.

But the larger point is this: At what point is a life worth not stomping on?

I respect spiders and let them go about their job of eating insects in my house. My wife is spooked by them, so I try to catch them on a sheet of paper and move them out of the house, apologizing to them for the inconvenience, telling them that it's better than being stomped to death.

Does a spider think? If so, about what? Probably a spider doesn't think. At least not about time.

The spider I'm watching now is in a web in a far corner of the ceiling of my basement office. He or she is sitting in the middle of its web, absolutely still. It's been sitting there for days. The web looks good. Sturdy but elegant. It ought to attract prey.

Shoot, I'd fly into it if I had a mind to. I've had days like that.

How long have I been watching? I've lost track. Need to get back to work.

Time means nothing to spiders.

Maybe they're onto something.

Try to be multi-dimensional.

I looked up "dimension" in the Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary and decided on definition 2d: "one of the elements or factors making up a complete personality or entity". We are all made up of different dimensions -- it's who we are and how we view the world. But it's up to us how many dimensions we have, how many dimensions define us in the end.



Dimension # 1 is probably the family we're born into. We all share this, and there's no escaping it. We can choose to turn our backs on our families as we grow older, as some of us do, but who bore us and who else they bore are primal factors in who we turn out to be.



I would say that Dimension #2 is the friends we make, beginning in childhood. We'll make more as we get older, but they'll always be this same dimension, this same intrinsic part of ourselves.



Dimension #3 is work. Unless we're born into wealth (see #1), we all have to work sooner or later. Some of us are lucky enough to land a job we like and may even become obsessed with it, while others have to labor at something they hate just to make a living. The rest of us accept the inevitability of whatever job we end up with and make the best of it; it doesn't kill us, but we're happy to leave it when something else comes up or when we can finally retire.



Those are the basic dimensions of our lives: family, friends, work. We might add others, such as education, but that's usually over in a certain numbers of years and isn't likely to be as ongoing a concern as we go through life -- although its ramifications may well affect the other dimensions: not just what kind of job we get but also the next two dimensions we'll consider.


Where we start to get interesting is when we go beyond those categories and begin to explore the world, when we enter new dimensions.



The first, and most important, of these -- we'll call it the 4th dimension -- is who we choose to be with, once we're sexually aware.

I would say it's who we marry, but gay people aren't generally allowed to marry, so I have to include them as they experience the same urges to partner-up as straights do. So let's say that the 4th dimension is who you choose as a partner. And part of that is whether you have kids, whether you start a family, either your own or adopted. Marriage/partnership and family is a package, so I lump it all into this 4th dimension.



Okay, so now you're born into a family, you have friends, a job you may or may not like, and you're linked with someone you like a lot, maybe even love, and you've decided to have kids or not. What next?



The 5th dimension -- can't you see it coming? -- is to fly above all that and realize your OWN ambitions. (Remember that song about flying high in a balloon? Of course you do.) What is it that YOU are interested in, outside your family and your job?



It may be sports, or art, or writing, or the stock market, or -- hey, even ballooning. The fifth dimension, as the song implies, is where/when you start to soar. It's what makes you uniquely you. It's likely why your spouse fell in love with you. It's what gives you pleasure when nothing else does. It's why you were put on this earth. Often, the reason you work -- besides putting food on the table, paying rent, etc. -- is to allow you to pursue your real interests.



Financial people would call it having a "diversified portfolio", meaning that all your assets aren't locked into one stock or fund. It means that your self-worth isn't defined solely by who you are as a (1) child or (2) friend or (3) worker or (4) husband/wife/partner/parent. You're all that, but you're more.



This isn't to say that some of the dimensions may not overlap: you may find that your work and your 5th dimension are the same, if you're fortunate enough to get paid for what you love to do.

It may turn out that your birth family loves your chosen spouse -- that's really lucky -- or that your husband or wife turns out to be your best friend, or that your children become your 5th dimension: your life's project, your obsession.



But, for most of us, it's more confusing and more complicated. We have to choose, constantly, between and among conflicting interests and loyalties: whether to attend a yoga class or go to a daughter's softball game, whether to work late instead of attending the play that our spouse dearly wants to see (part of his or her 5th dimension), whether to succumb to the temptations of a co-worker and risk wrecking our marriage or stay faithful and be bored, whether to . . . you get the picture. Choices. Dilemmas.

If you stay single, then you can indulge your own hobbies and personal pursuits to a much greater extent -- but then you've eliminated that 4th dimension: choosing a partner and maybe starting a family. You may find yourself, in middle age, still having Thanksgiving dinner at your parents' house -- just you and them because your siblings, if you have any, are busy with their own families halfway across the country. And you may end up alone at the end of your life.

Something similar can happen if you become obsessed with work or with one of your interests and neglect other important parts of your life -- e.g., your family. It's a difficult juggling act, but the more balls you can keep in the air at the same time, the richer your life is going to be. In other words, the more opportunities you give yourself -- the more dimensions you make available -- the less likely you are to let trouble in one dimension make you miserable.

If, for instance, your spouse fusses at you or your child is disrepectful, if your boss gives you a talking-to, you're much better off if you have some other dimension to seek refuge in: art or sports or reading or hiking or just time with friends or whatever, at least temporarily.

Consider the consequences of limiting your dimensions. Here's an extreme example: You've just been fired, you're not married, you're out of touch with your birth family, and you have no interests -- maybe because your job was everything. Depressing, no? Here's another, not quite as drastic: You sky-dive as a hobby (or ride motorcycles or even ski), and you get hurt. Let's hope you have a boss who will understand, a family that will take care of you, friends to visit you, and other interests that you can do from your bed or at least your house.

There is no end to the combinations of possibilities that will happen to us as humans, both good and bad, but living life on a wider scale, a multi-dimensional life, gives us a better chance of getting through the hard times -- the collapse of a dimension (work, marriage/family, a prized friendship, etc.).

[There are, of course, negative dimensions available to us -- crime, addiction, etc. -- but that's a topic for another time. Let's stay positive for now.]

I think it was Socrates who said, "The un-examined life is not worth living." So start examining yours right now and see if you can identify all your dimensions. It may be time to start adding a few. I'm betting you'll be a more satisfied person for the effort -- and better company, too.

How do you want to die?

Yes, I know you don't want to die at all. But you're going to, and so am I, and so has everyone who has ever lived, including Lincoln and Hitler and even Jesus (on the cross --ouch!).

But it's a subject most of us want to ignore and avoid, which is understandable, since it means the end of you and me and our perceptions of the world as we experienced them, for good or bad. Lights out. (What comes next, if anything, is something to explore in another post.)

Okay, so we're all going to die. Cease to exist. I don't know why the system is organized that way, but it is. Any organism that breathes or is otherwise alive only lives for a while and then expires: dies. Arguments aside about whether this is the best way to run a universe of living creatures, this is how it works.

You and I are going to die, and the only way you can choose your method of exit is to commit suicide. A bullet to the head usually does it. Not always, though, as sometimes your aim is off and you end up with brain damage but still alive. A shotgun blast to the head -- ala Hemingway and Kurt Corbain -- is more sure. But think of the mess someone has to clean up. Hard to think about your loved one sympathetically when you had to scrub his/her brains from your carpet.

Most of us don't want to be so dramatic, or so messy. We don't want to leave our loved ones stressed out, traumatized by our private, even selfish, decision to end it all. Sleeping pills or carbon monixide poisoning -- the car in the closed garage -- seems more humane. But even then, we're going to leave someone discovering our dead body and having to call the authorities.

Suicide really should be a last resort, just out of deference to our families.

So let's get back to the purely theoretical. If you had your choice -- which you don't, if you rule out suicide (and you should) -- how do you want to die?

Accident? In a car or on a bike or by having a big rock fall on your head? A long illness that finally renders you an invalid, tubes in your arms, probably sedated beyond recognizing even your immediate family? Old and fading, your heart ticking slower and slower, fading in and out of consciousness? A stroke or heart attack: alive one minute, dead on the floor the next?

Like many other subjects we have no control over, this is just one to think about. Something for cocktail party talk. Well, maybe a pretty sophisticated cocktail party, one involving people who aren't spooked by thinking about their own mortality.

I remember hearing/reading about another cocktail party game: What super-power would you choose if you could pick just one? Invisibility? Flying? Great strength? Etc. Consider this like that: If you could choose -- barrring suicide -- how would you die?

Somebody told me that drowning isn't so bad -- once you get past that panic factor. Can that be true? Can I trust that person? The author Virginia Woolf walked into a river with stones in her pocket to be sure that she drowned. Sylvia Plath, the gifted poet, put her head into an un-lit oven, at 30. Who knows what death was like for either one of them?

When I was at the University of Texas as a grad student, many years ago, the Tower that houses the library was still open, despite the fact that Charles Whitman had hid out up there a few years before and shot many people to death until he was finally targeted and eventually killed by a brave policeman. While I was there, more than one distraught student committed suicide by plunging from the tower. I'll always remember the girl who set her shoes on top of the ledge and the one who, according to witnesses, started screaming halfway down. That's not the way I want to go out: knowing, when it's too late, that I've made the ultimate wrong decision.

The tower has since been shut to visitors.

We all have to die someday, so I think it's worth thinking about how it might happen. Let's hope it's at an advanced age, that we just go to sleep and don't wake up. In fact, there's a Kenny Rogers song, "The Gambler", that says "The best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep." But you and I know that's not the way it happens for most of us.

So, if you had a choice, which you don't if you're not up to killing yourself . . . do you want to go after a long illness, when you've had time to say goodbye to all your loved ones? Or do you want to go suddenly -- a rock on your head, a heart attack, etc. -- without all that prolonged suffering?

Food for thought, but not particularly appetizing food.

Still, when you gotta go, you gotta go, right?

Good neighbors come in all flavors.

[NOTE: This is sort of like an earlier post about the value of getting to know your neighbors but with a different take: The varieties, or flavors, of good neighbors.]

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary defines a neighborhood as "the people living near one another" or "a section lived in by neighbors and usually having distinguishing characteristics."

I think the dictionary people are thinking about two different neighborhoods: the one where we're all thrown together because it's the house we can afford, and the other based on ethnic or religious or whatever preference, including age (e.g., those over-55 enclaves).

Let's consider the former: people thrown together for no reason except that they/we chose to live in a certain part of town, a certain neighborhood.

These days, we're put into proximity by chance. You and your spouse, of whatever ethnicity or persuasion, chose this neighborhood -- this street, this cul-de-sac -- because it suited your family's needs: access to schools, shopping, etc. And it was the best you could afford.

Those of us who live on this modern-day street look up one day and find a new family moving in down the street. We see tne moving van. What do we do?

At best, we wave to you, as you wave to us, and then we all go about our own ways.

When I was a kid, growing up in a small town in Texas, everyone on my street knew me and what I was up to. And they knew my parents. And they told on me when I mis-behaved. They also took me in if I needed to be taken in; no questions asked.

We've evolved (devolved?) as a society, beyond that old small-town mentality of everyone looking after everyone else's kids, to one where we hardly know our neighbors at all.

What have we gained, and what have we lost?

We are all, for better or worse, now just a bunch of people thrown together because we've chosen to live where we live, for our own purposes. For the most part, we don't share a cultural/racial heritage. Which is good or bad, depending on how you look at it. We're no longer locked into certain ways of thinking about people. But, at the same time, we don't know each other. Or each other's kids. We occupy the same approximate space, but we keep to ourselves, within our respective families. We wave, we smile, but . . .

So, minus the old attachments that used to solidify neighborhoods, we have to come up with new ways of dealing with each other, new ways of being "good neighbors".

There are all kinds of good neighbors.

First, there are the ones who leave us alone, and we leave them alone. We might wave and even smile on our way to the mailbox and back. They have their own stories, which we don't want to explore and which they don't want to share with us. They also don't want to know ours. We co-exist in mutual cordiality.

Then there are neighbors who maybe we get to know, on a first-name basis which we promptly forget and have to try to remember later. Nice people, but only met on walks or in front of our houses or at the mailboxes. We pet their dogs when they sniff us. We probably don't get to know their children, but we do try not to run over them on their bikes and skateboards.

There are also neighbors who want us to be friends, who constantly try to engage us, to get us to do things with them: movies, bike rides, suppers, etc. That's fine if we're looking for that kind of relationship. If not, we have to be careful with our excuses, because they really are good people, and we want to keep them in reserve in case something dire happens and we need to call on them. We might bring their mail and newspapers in when they're out of town, and they ours. We may even have exchanged house keys.

Once in a great while, neighbors do become good friends -- people we would otherwise have wanted to spend time with -- and that's a real blessing. Often, though, it's only the wives or husbands who develop this bond so that it's kind of a strain for the families to get together since the other spouses haven't bonded the same way.

Human relationships are so iffy, so dependent on mysterious factors, that the chances of having neighbors who are also good friends -- both husband and wife -- are infinitesimal: next to zero. If you have neighbors that you and your spouse are best friends with, you've hit the jackpot. Count your blessings.

In the meantime, appreciate the relationships you have with your neighbors and keep in mind that there are all kinds -- all flavors -- of good neighbors. We don't have to all be buddies or gal pals just because we live near each other. But we do need to be polite and respectful of each other's space and privacy, and helpful if asked.

And while you're thinking about what kind of neighbors you have, give some thought to what kind of neighbor YOU are.

(By the way, there are various flavors of bad neighbors, too, but that's a subject for a different time.)

Now get out there and wave at somebody!