Most of us can name more cars that we've owned than people we've kissed.

Which is the more important event? Owning a car or kissing someone? Maybe because most of us kiss more people than we have cars, we likely remember the cars we had more than the people we've kissed.


But how about if we up it a notch and include sex? Can you name all the people you've had sex with? And, again, can you name all the cars you've had?

Quick now: name both. The clock is ticking. Okay, there was this girl/guy and that car, and then there was that other girl/guy and that other car. Time's up!

Did you name more sex partners or more cars? Or more people you'd kissed? My guess -- and I'm out on a limb here -- is that you correctly remembered more of your cars.

If I'm right, what does that say about us as a people? That we have more kiss/sex partners than we have cars? Or that our cars stick in our minds more than our romantic sex partners do?

Hmmm . . .

My first car was kind of a clunker that I had my dad buy for me while I was in the army, looking forward to coming home and cruising and picking up chicks. I honestly can't recall what it was -- maybe an Oldsmobile? -- with the money I'd sent home -- but it was big and clunky, the kind of car I'd give a lot to have now but which, at the time, spelled "Nerd" even before the word had been invented. A "friend" told me I should say I'd won it in a poker game.


For the record, I'd already kissed a number of girls by then and even had sex with some. And yes, I can remember them all, but probably not as well as I can remember that car, which ran well but looked like something my grandpa should be driving.

The second car my dad helped me buy -- with my money again -- was an old black Cadillac. He loved Cadillacs, knowing -- as I didn't -- that they were not just good-looking but also strong and sturdy. When I promptly got into a wreck with that one -- driving too fast -- it almost totally destroyed the car I ran into, a 1950 Ford sitting innocently in its driveway. I ran it into a tree.

The car I bought when I came back home from the war was a '62 Chevy, a beautiful one-owner that I subsequently ran into a bridge on my way home from a drunken party during which I took a pistol away from a woman who was about to shoot her husband. (That's another story.) My big brother, now deceased, sold off most of its parts and later denied it. (But that's another story, too.) During that same time, when I was young and dumb and married for the first time, I had an older Buick that the guy at the neighborhood service station passed on its inspection just because he liked me. I didn't wreck that one but later had to surrender all my cars to the bank after I let my (now ex-) wife do our finances. I rode buses around Austin, Texas, for a year.


In the meantime, despite being married -- still young -- I did kiss some girls, though I'm not proud of it. (She probably kissed guys, too.) No sex, though. I was married, right?


My first vehicle after that was a 1968 red Ford Ranchero pickup, my first truck, and by then, with my marriage heading south, I was kissing anyone who would kiss me and having sex with some -- memorable in some instances, not so much in others (for them, too, I suspect). Sad to say, I wrecked that one, too, when I turned in front of someone who whacked me. (My fault.)
I eventually sold it, for not much, to a guy who wanted a beat-up truck to herd his cows. I think he gave me $400.


I was divorced not much later and stopped kissing girls other than my future wife.


Nowadays I drive a min-van and don't kiss anyone.


Do I miss those days? Yes and no. I'll never regret kissing girls and will always regret the ones I could have kissed and didn't. All guys regret not kissing, or having sex with, girls they knew.
It's just part of being a guy. Shameful, maybe, but true. (I'm sure girls think the same, but I'm not privvy to their thinking on this.) For guys, it's just part of our pathology.


But do I miss those cars? Again, yes and no. I wish I had that '62 Chevy back again. I would baby it and preserve it. I might do the same for the 1959 Thunderbird that my big brother sold out from under me while I was in the army (and swore that our father had sold it).

I really wish I had that 1952 black Cadillac again. At the time, it was so un-cool but now it would be a dream car, worth restoring. It was built like a tank and drove like a dream. And when I ran it into that 1950 Ford, when I was young and driving too fast, the Ford crumpled like a Coke cup under my wheels. Yes, I got a ticket, and yes, recompense was made, but that's the car I wish I had back.

(Since then, by the way, I've been a very good driver.)

Do I remember the names of the girls I kissed (and did more with) while I owned those cars? Some I do, some I don't. I'm not even sure I remember all their faces. Do I remember the cars? Yes, I do.

What does that say about me? About guys? About our society?

Not sure, but give me the right girl in the right car on a moonlit night, and I'm transported back to those innocent years when everything seemed possible.

That's what it's all about, no?

Where you're from matters, or not.

I was born in Texas. I grew up there, in McKinney, a small town just north of Dallas. I went to college in Denton, thirty miles from my hometown, and then joined the army. After my discharge, I went back to Denton and got a degree from North Texas State. Then I went to Austin -- the U. of Texas -- to get a graduate degree.

So where am I from?

Technically I'm from McKinney, my hometown, where I learned (not much) about girls and school and family dynamics and how mean or nice we can all be to each other. But I'm also from Denton, where I first went to college, for a couple of years, and where I landed again, after my years in the army and my year in Viet Nam, where I got married to the wrong woman but got high a lot and first found out that girls were at least as smart as me, in many cases smarter.

But when I moved to Austin, with a couple of degrees in hand, it was an epiphany. Here were all those like souls I'd been looking for and only finding in scattered bunches before: here they all were together! And of course Austin is a cool place to live whoever you are. It's got music and the University and the Capitol and the LBJ Library and the Harry Ransom Center and the river that runs through it and . . . you get the picture.

So I told myself that I was from McKinney, my hometown, but I came of age in Denton, then expanded on that in the army -- in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Georgia, and finally Viet Nam. I ended up in Austin, where I found a kind of psychic home. I was maybe 28 at the time. I divorced my first wife and met my current one. We were married on Ground Hog Day in 1978.

So I'm from Austin, right? A true Texan.

And then the damnedest thing happened: I moved to Colorado.

I found myself bedazzled by the mountains and the crisp air and the lack of bugs.

Colorado became the new place I was from. It remains that way to this day. If someone far from home asks me where I'm from, I say, "Colorado." It does occur to me to say, "I was born in Texas", but having been born in Texas becomes more and more like an accident of birth, and you either bond with your birth mother or you don't. I did and I didn't.

I chose the cool stepmother, Colorado, who can't cook as well and isn't as huggy but who keeps herself clean and clear and bright, smelling like new pine and always up for a hike or a bike ride.
Her heights still astonish me, as does her love of snow in winter and flowers in spring. Just when I thought I was getting jaded, she rejuvenated me.

You may have experienced the same kind of transformation/transportation. You were born into a place that suited you or didn't. You made a choice to leave or stay put. You may have been born in Oklahoma, where your family still is, but moved to New York City, where your family feels totally out of place even though you feel at home there. Or you may have wished you'd moved to Chicago, where your heart was leading you, but you stayed home for reasons you can't remember. These are hard decisions, and we often have to make them under pressure. It's a wonder we don't screw them up more than we do.

Where you're from is only important if you still feel connections to that birth place. If you've moved from there --physically/mentally/psychologically/emotionally -- you may actually be a new native of a totally different town/state/country/universe (if you're getting all spiritual). And your family may have a hard time placing you on their mental map. You were born here in Michigan, they might say, but now you're saying you're from Key West? What is Key West? Sounds like a place that you go to when you lost your car key and need another one made. Where is it?

The first big misconnections among families start when the kids leave home and live in places their parents never imagined. Storylines start to divert. Mom and Dad seem, for the first time, old. The world opens up suddenly to one generation just as it's slowly closing on another.

I remember asking a girl I knew in college where she was from, and she said, "I'm from where I am now." We were stoned, of course, so I didn't give her answer much value. But she had a point, in a way. You and I are who we are where we are at any given point, but only if we feel okay there. If we'd rather be somewhere else -- even if we don't know where that is -- it may be time to hit the road and keep exploring. The girl in question was fine where she was. I wasn't.

If you don't love the snow and the melting rivers running cold and pure and the landscapes of yellow aspen trees and the mountains and all that, you may love the beaches and the hot sun.
You may have grown up in one place, one climate, and either love it or can't wait to get the hell out! Where you stay, where you land for good, is where you're "from" in the end.

If I think beyond Colorado, I can imagine myself a soul-resident of Cape Cod. "Soul" because I've never been there, but I think I'd like the way the ocean breaks on those beaches where I don't have to lie near-naked in the hot sun to get the gist. And I know I would love eating lobster.

Whatever we choose, or don't choose, we all have the place we were born and the place we live our lives, with detours along the way -- and maybe even the place we always wanted to live but didn't. Where you're from only matters if where you're from is where you still are. Otherwise, it's just another interesting fact about you.

Don't forget to keep in touch with the relatives, okay?

Sooner or later we're all orphans.

Unless you die before your parents do -- which does happen but isn't the norm -- you and I will someday be orphans. Parentless. Alone as adults in the big wide dangerous world.

Of course kids do sometimes die before their parents do, and as sad as it is, it's not what usually happens. For most of us, our parents will die first just because they're older. It may happen when we're young, but more often it happens when we're in middle age or even older.

Whenever it happens, it's a shock. The people who literally created you and me from nothing are gone. At some point, and on some level, it doesn't matter if they were kind or cruel: they made us. Not just metaphorically but in reality: your father's sperm mixed with your mother's egg (and, yes, you know how), and you became you. So when our parents die, we have to feel sad, for all kinds of reasons.

What the death of both parents means differs, of course, depending on your age. If you're young, I'm sure your world is turned upside down, since you depended on them for almost everything, and now they're gone. Maybe they made provisions for you, maybe not. Good luck. If you're older, as is usually the case, your life -- already established away from them, maybe a spouse and even kids -- isn't uprooted, but you still have emotions to deal with. Having become an adult yourself, you look back on time spent with your parents with different emotions, some good, some not so good, maybe some really bad. You have to talk over their passing with your siblings, if you have any. Your memories and opinions will likely collide.

But what the death of parents means most to those of us who are forty or fifty or beyond is that we are now the seniors of our families and our generation. We're the adults now, the ones passing down judgments and trying to look smart -- while we're all still hoping to get high at least a few more times!

And we acknowledge the most important thing about our parents' passing: we're next. For those of us who thought we'd be young forever -- yes, the Sixties crowd -- we've come up against that big brick wall of mortality. Ouch!

Once you're an orphan, you're on your own. No more pleasing Mom or Dad, no more playing the kid. Time to grow up. And whether you're twenty or forty or sixty when it happens, you better get ready. It can happen at any time, and we're never -- at any age -- ready for it. We all come into this world with a mom and a dad (whether they stay together or not). That's a fact. But what's also a fact is that at some point we lose them both. We become orphans. On our own.

How we deal with that is a personal matter.

Is it okay these days to be by yourself?

It's a legitimate question now that we're all in constant conact with each other and get peeved when someone doesn't respond to our latest email or tweet or whatever right away. We're becoming addicted to instant communication.

And no, I don't use the word "addicted" lightly.

Is your cell phone on now? Are you alert to emails that may prevent you from reading the rest of this? Are you being tweeted right now?

It's okay. It's who we are, who we've become. Always on call, always in touch.

Do you ever have days when you don't want to check your email or your phone or anything? Days that you just want to be left alone? Not necessarily because you're bummed out; you may want to take the day off to go fishing or golfing or shopping or walking or whatever. Something that will take you out of the range of instant communication.

Do you act on it and take that day off . . . or just wish you had?

There is much good to be said for our current era of communication-on-demand: you can "talk" with anyone any time of the day or night. Everyone is available all the time.

But that's also kind of creepy, no? No place to hide. It need not be Orwell's Big Brother who is watching you all the time -- it could as well be Big Friend or Big Mom or Big Boyfriend or Big Boss. Whoever insists on always being in contact with you. And whose call/emails/tweets you feel you must answer immediately.

Face it: You're addicted. Or they are. They can't give it up. That's what addiction is.

What they've lost -- what we're all in danger of losing -- is not just time spent with real friends in real time over real coffee and real conversation, but that time spent alone. Just you with you. No distractions. Your back against a tree or a library chair or a pillow or . . . choose your place. Relax and don't think about anything. See what pops up after ten minutes or so. (It takes that long for the brain to settle.) Give it another ten minutes or more with your eyes closed. When you finally stand up, you may be a little woozy from all that passive thinking, but you'll either be on your way to enlightenment or, at worst, rested.

We should all take "me" breaks during the day: time away from everyone and everything. We would probably come back to the sturm and drang (storm and stress) of instant communication with renewed vigor. Back in touch with who we are and what matters to us, beyond the job and the bills, beyond the obligations to others.

Being available to any and all can be taxing after a while. Put those devices away and take time for yourself, by yourself, every now and then, okay?

You'll be glad you did. So will all your friends and loved ones, once they get used to it.

When it comes to sex, the body is better experienced than observed.

Face it: almost none of us looks like the models in magazines. Okay, maybe a very few of us do, but I mean, come on, those girls and boys are chosen, and paid, because they are "hot": they have the bodies we never had but wished we'd had. We can console ourselves by thinking they're not very smart, but that may be wishful thinking. What if they're smart and also look like that?

Unthinkable.

Looking at beautiful people -- in magazines, in movies, wherever -- is an odd kind of human obsession. I wonder if animals do that. Probably not. Mate selection among them seems to be pretty primitive: the biggest, strongest male wins the female.

In human terms, it gets a lot trickier. That alpha male might be a nerdy billionaire: what's a girl to do? That totally hot woman you're all ga-ga over is what your family would call "trashy": what's a guy to do? What it all boils down to is that humans don't pick each other just based on who's biggest or who smells right. That, of course, is why we make so many mistakes, some tragic. But would you have it any other way?

When it comes down to time spent between the sheets, having sex, what matters most is not how someone looks but how that same someone responds to you or to me. The most beautiful girl might turn out to be -- and I can vouch for this -- not a good kisser. The guy you always thought of as a friend but who turns out to be something more may end up the father of your children.

Why?

Because that most intimate of acts, sex, is enjoyed in the dark, under the sheets, between two people, with no one watching. The body, yours or mine, is best experienced by someone who wants to get closer to us, who wants to meld his/her body with yours/mine, when it's just us together, and nobody needs to say anything. At the point of that kind of connection, no one is thinking about how the other looks: we're locked into that most primal of states, mating, and the rest of the world is a non-factor.

I think it's important to remember that what brings us together as couples, as mates, is an attraction that has its roots in our most basic urges, but what keeps us together is how well we get along and how we choose to raise the children that are born of those intimate couplings. Sex is the first thing that has to be dealt with when we're thinking of linking up with someone else, but it's only the stepping-stone to a permanent and meaningful relationship. And it's best done in the dark, where we're face to face with this one other person, in total privacy. If things don't work well, then is the time to address it. If they do, say your prayers even if you don't mean them. And always remember that it's not necessary to parade around for each other with no clothes on unless you want to. Sex is best enjoyed by bodies, not eyes.

Close your eyes and just feel. Remember that song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show: "Give yourself over to absolute pleasure . . ."

First do no harm.

That's the doctors' motto, and it's a good one for the rest of us, too.

In the doctor's case, it means don't let your procedure on a patient cause more pain than he or she is already in or in some other way make the patient's condition worse. If you can't heal, at least don't harm. Leave ill enough alone.

In the case of the rest of us, it means not hurting other people in our relationships.

I would add something, though, in the latter case: Don't hurt anyone more than you have to.

The problem is that there are cases, in both instances, where it's unavoidable.

In the case of the doctor, he or she may think a case is hopeless but may have to order more tests just to placate a family not willing or ready to accept death as the outcome. Even when the doctor knows that more tests and more treatments might prolong life a while but in the end are almost guaranteed to make the terminal patient's last few days or weeks even worse. If the family wants it -- demands it -- what are you supposed to do? At that point, it's not about money, although the more procedures you do, as the doctor, the more money you'll get.

Even when you know that those procedures are just putting off, for a while, the inevitable. If the family, or the patient, insists on "extraordinary measures" to keep him or her alive a while longer, I guess you have to acquiesce and just do it, even though you know it's fruitless.

In the case of personal relationships, it gets more complicated. Assuming you buy the premise that you shouldn't do harm unless you have to, what about the lover you have to reject?
How do you do that without causing harm? He or she thought you would be his/hers forever, and now you're saying that it's over, that you aren't in love anymore, that you don't want to keep seeing him or her. Ouch! That's harm right away.

Which is why I say the dictum of "do no harm" needs to be amended when talking about relationships to be "do no more harm than is necessary". Let that rejected lover down easily. Say it was because you didn't know yourself well enough to make that commitment. Say you still aren't sure who you are or what you want. In other words, accept the bulk of the blame, even if you don't feel you deserve it -- it will let you out of the unwanted relationship without having someone stalk you later out of resentment. Try to be sure that your rejected lovers don't hate you: that's your best protection.

Do no more harm than is necessary in your family, too. Family is the set of people inflicted upon us because of our birth. We didn't choose any of them. They're just a given. And some of them will probably have beefs with us all our lives for all sorts of reasons (too complicated to go into here). And there will be times when you have to tell them no: No, I won't come to that wedding, or No, I won't show up at your kid's birthday, or No, I don't agree with what you want to do with our old parents who can't take care of themselves anymore, etc.

Just be careful, when those times come, as they certainly will, that you're sure to couch your statements -- especially your refusals -- in a way that lets them know you're not blaming them. Whether you attend a particular function or whether you opt to put the old folks in an assisted-living facility or whether you forgive, or not, a sibling for a past wrong, do it in a way that lets them know you still love them and are ready to support them in other ways. Don't attack them. Don't cut off ties. Leave all the doors and windows of communication and understanding open.

First do no harm. Be yourself and let everyone know, early on, who that self is and what he/she is willing to accept and go along with. Once they know who you are, the less likely they are to ask
you to do what you don't want to do.

And the less likely it will be that you have to do harm.

I think there's no way to live a full life on this earth without harming someone. There are so many feelings to deal with, most out of our control, that if we do what we think is right, we're almost certain to hurt someone's feelings just because what we decide to do conflicts with what someone else thought we should do. If we're true to ourselves, to our values and beliefs, we will do some harm to someone who doesn't agree with us, but not that much.

The goal is to do the LEAST harm possible. In other words, be true to yourself, but don't ever go out of your way to make life harder for someone else. As the Google people say, "Don't be evil." Live your life as honestly as possible, and if that honesty causes other people harm, that's just the price they pay for not being as honest as you. But be nice to them, for, as Jesus supposedly said on the cross, "They know not what they do." Your friends and family will often be selfish and unreasonable, but if you want to keep your relationships with them strong, you'll tell them that you're just the way you are but that you love them anyway. Don't back down but don't attack. Keep the high ground.

Whoever said being good and honest would win you lots of friends? In your family or out of it? Being true to yourself is hard just because it makes some people not like you. Can you handle that? If not, you better steer clear of politics. If so, you're likely to end up with friends and family who understand you and love you even when they don't agree with you. It's really hard to hate someone who knows where he/she stands and who is never malicious toward anyone.

Be the best person you can be, doing the least harm necessary to others, and you'll be okay.

Harm must be done sometimes, just because there are times when you are the bearer of bad news -- or truths about people they don't want to hear -- but be sure the harm you inflict on those you love is necessary.

Ouch.

Learn to cook something.

We're all invited, from time to time, to someone's house and asked to bring a dish.

For some of us, the cooks among us, it's no big deal. We'll bring our "famous" meatballs or chicken-whatever or killer salad or to-die-for dessert. After all, everyone has always told us how great it is, and it only takes a little time to put together.

For others of us, it's a time to panic. Bring a dish? What dish? We don't cook, have no idea how to cook, never learned to cook, and don't want to now. We're reduced to buying something from a trusted deli or even just the neighborhood grocery store -- a pie, a salad, a side dish -- and trying to pass it off as our own. Or, worse, admitting that we didn't make it ourselves.

That's why it's good to know how to cook at least one dish. Something you can always contribute to a pot-luck and be sure it will be well-recieved. And everyone knows you actually made it. And it's better than they could make!

That's the kicker, of course. If you make a "signature" dish -- Mary's brownies or Ken's swordfish casserole -- you have to learn how to make it and be sure it turns out just right every frigging time.

Not to worry. Over the years I've learned how to make three dishes that always turn out right.
And I'm going to share them with you now.

I won't give you exact measurements, just a narrative that you can adjust as you please, okay?

MASHED POTATOES

You need these ingredients: several pounds of potatoes (Yukon Gold are best), a small can of evaporated milk, some butter (the more the better), some salt. You peel the potatoes and then cut them into large chunks and boil them until you can easily poke a fork into them (firm but not quite falling apart). You put them into a bowl and add the other ingredients and mash them, with a potato masher (more efficient than a fork), occasionally stirring, until they are the consistency you want them. Don't put them into a blender, which turns them into goo. Think of the difference between smooth and crunchy peanut butter: who wouldn't prefer the crunchy? You want a few tiny chunks in your mashed potatoes, for texture but also to prove that you made them yourself. If too dry, add more evaporated milk; if too bland, add more butter and sprinkle in a little more salt. That's all there is to it. And it works every time. Trust me. Make them a day before and refrigerate. They re-heat well in the microwave.

BEANS

Beans are a wonderful food. Flavorful, rich in protein, a perfect side dish for any meal -- or a meal in themselves, if cooked the right way.

Few invitees to a potluck volunteer to bring beans, so here's where you can shine.

Take a package of dried beans (not canned). Any kind, depending on what you like, often in a one-pound (or less) package. Great Northern and Navy are good whites; Pinto is the best red.
Pour a couple of cans of chicken stock into a pot along with some ham hocks (sold in a package in the deli of your grocery store). Heat to boiling. Cover and let run at medium heat a while: you're letting the meat soften and separate from the bone. Add the dried beans. Cover again and lower the heat. (NOTE: The lower the heat, the easier it is for you to keep checking, to be sure things are going okay.) At some point before the beans are done, take the ham hocks out and strip the meat off the bones, chopping it if you want. Put back in with the beans. At the same time, chop a few bulbs of garlic and some onion. How much is up to you, but I vote for more. Chop the garlic fine, the onion not so fine, and add to the beans. Stir. Cover again, still on LOW. I like to add chopped carrots at this point: they're good for me, and they don't interfere with the beans.

Keep an eye on the beans as they cook. Stir occasionally. To know if they're done cooking, spoon out one or more, at any point in the cooking, and taste: if it's too firm, doesn't "melt in the mouth", more cooking is needed. Once you're convinced the beans are cooked, take them off the burner, give them a good stir, and either leave them covered or not as you prefer.

RIBS

No one except vegetarians can resist a rack of perfectly done pork ribs, sizzling on a platter, irredescent in barbecue sauce, hinting of The Old South. And you can make these with almost no trouble. I've done it, many times, and, as I hope I've made clear, I'm no great cook. Here's how to do it. Always pick baby back pork ribs. They're the tenderest and shortest and what most of us think of when we think of eating ribs. Of course they're more expensive than their bigger, coarser kin, which you have to chop into pieces, but we're thinking of impressing friends and neighbors here, right? A few extra bucks once a year just might be worth it.

Here's the easy part: it's all done in a crockpot and (briefly) an oven.

Put the ribs into the crockpot and apply -- I do it by hand -- a barbecue sauce of your choice. Try to stand them up, not against the sides of the crockpot, where they're likely to stick. Put a layer of aluminum foil under the lid of the crockpot (to better seal in the juices) and close the lid. Set to cook for a few hours on LOW. Check from time to time with a fork to see when the meat is ready to fall off the bones, at which point you want to arrange the ribs (already cooked) on a baking tray. Brush them with barbecue sauce and put them in the oven on a rack near the top. Turn the oven to BROIL and start. NOTE: Keep a good eye on the ribs after a minute or so, as they can blacken on top if left even a few seconds too long. Once you've seen that they're crisping up on top, not burning/blackening, take the tray from the oven and turn the ribs over and repeat the process, being very careful to monitor the cooking as you're looking, on both sides, for a slight "char", not a burn.

When you think they're done, take them from the oven and set them out to finish. They're ready to eat immediately, of course, and it's hard to resist a hot pork rib crisp on the outside and so moist and delicious on the inside. And that's the way these turn out. Almost every time.

(Do be watchful when they're in the oven under BROIL: one time I wasn't and set off all the fire alarms in the house. Very embarrassing.)

So there you have it: three dishes you can do very easily and claim as your own the next time someone asks you to bring something to a potluck dinner. Instead of that pie you were going to buy or that bag of bagels or chips you were going to bring, you can actually say, "Let me do the mashed potatoes" or "I can cook a pot of beans" or "I do a mean pork rib" -- and mean it!

And if you're ever called upon -- God forbid! -- to cook a whole meal for friends or relatives, this is it! Good old Southern cooking done easy. Just heat some ears of corn in the microwave, in a container with a loose but not air-tight top, a little water in the bottom to help them steam, for five minutes or so (until the kernels pop easily, releasing liquid), and slather with melted butter, sprinkled with salt. (Buy some of those cheap corn-holders to spare diners' fingers from the butter. If you get the plastic kind, they can heat in the microwave along with the corn.)

That's pretty much all I know about cooking. Everything I learned to cook I did because I wanted something that tasted good and wasn't hard to make. Believe me, if I made these dishes and they tasted good, which I did and which they do, you can, too.

Oh, by the way I do have two more dishes I kind of know how to cook: Texas-style chili and a thirty-minute beef stew, which is surprisingly good. More on those later.

Bon appetit!

Don't marry an addict.

Forget the dictionary definition: an addict is someone so devoted to something that he or she is going to have a hard time giving it up. It might be drugs or alcohol, which lots of men suffer from, or it might be pain-killers or shopping, which lots of women suffer from.

In any case, your marrying this person is not likely to inspire a change in your intended.

Take it as a warning sign. Most addictions just get worse. Sorry about that.

If the guy or gal you're head-over-heels in love with insists on taking drugs or brings home items he/she can't really afford, on a regular basis, the red flag should be up.

You, however loving and attentive you may be, will likely not change that person you have decided to spend your life with. Before he/she met you, he/she developed an irresistible taste for something potentially destructive: drugs, alcohol, gambling, or whatever.

He or she is in love with you and will promise you anything because you're having sex. When a couple is having sex, not much else matters. You're in bed naked together. Not much hidden.

But maybe there is. Once the reality of life sets in -- back to our work schedules, etc. -- and sex gets to be something we have to plan for, then the real person emerges.

That's when we know who we married. There are lots of studs who turn out to be bum husbands, just as there are hot wives who end up being takers, not givers.

If you married someone who was addicted to something -- drugs or alcohol or sweets or shopping -- that person is going to re-emerge and is going to be him or her forever. You signed the contract, and you are bound. Married. Congratulations.

To be fair, many marriages last forever, and God bless those lucky -- or resigned -- couples. But agreeing to spend the rest of your life with another person is risky business (and divorces are nasty and messy and to be avoided if you can).

There are danger signals all along the way, to be sure, but one of the most prominent is whether your intended is addicted to something.

The reason, not to sound repetitive, is that the addiction started before your love did and, in the mind of your loved one, may have precedence. His/her addiction precedes his/her commitment to you. Not consciously: he or she loves you and wants to make it work, but that previous commitment to something you don't know about might make him or her at least conflicted. You may have married a wonderful person who had baggage he/she hadn't checked with you.

I don't think it's necessary to screen your soon-to-be for every infraction going back to childhood, but I do think it's important to know if that charming person who swept you off your feet -- and really is a superior human, at least in your eyes -- is addicted to something. That should be a basic question on the "So You Want to Marry Me" questionnaire.

What if the dude is into hang-gliding? Or loves to shoot guns? Or . . . fill in the blanks with anything he/she forgot to tell you. What if your lovely can't stay off the phone to her gal pals? Is on it for hours every day? Or sneaks sweet bites at night when she thinks you're asleep? (She lost weight to land you but is gaining it back.) And how many beers did you have today?

The possibilities are endless, but the message is pretty simple. Don't marry someone who is addicted to something unless you know about it ahead of time and either accept it or believe that your beloved is going to stop it -- which is highly unlikely.

Love between two people is as close to magic as we humans get in this life. But it's a dream that we eventually wake up from to find that we're living with someone we hardly know because his or her kisses (and more) blinded us. Uh oh. Real life is breakfast and work and maybe kids. And it's every damned day. (Unlike dreams, which only come every now and then, at night -- or when we let ourselves daydream, which can be dangerous.)

At some point, all of us married folk look at "the other" and think, "Oh shit, what did I do?"

Often, as I said before, it turns out fine, and we're glad we're sharing the rest of our life with that person we chose on so little evidence. But sometimes it doesn't, and we have to face the awfulness of separating from that person we've been sharing our life with. Many times it's because there was something our mate didn't disclose -- maybe a past, maybe an addiction -- that made impossible a union that looked pretty permanent.

All we need is love, the Beatles sang, but it's one of those concepts that is as rife with footnotes as any treatise ever published on any subject. We humans are addicted to love and have no way to fend it off or resist its charms or free ourselves of it. But we don't have a clue how it works.

And that's what makes marriage so hard. Love, at least in its early stages, triumphs all other addictions. A drug addict or an alcoholic or a binge-eater will promise anything to who she or he is sexually connected to. In those early days or years of love-addiction, he or she will swear off of anything and everything.

But it won't last, if the addiction came before the love.

Eventually real life sets in, and we find out who we're with.

Do your homework before you fall in love. Do I think you will? No, of course not.