Roger:

You propose that my mother select three possible wives, of which I must choose one. Egad! What a nightmarish idea! It will never work for several reasons.

First, I have long since established that my mother and I have different taste in women. As do all good mothers, mine periodically "suggests" possible mates (bank tellers, pretty sounding names in the phone book, etc.) and we have yet to agree. Were I forced to accept one of these insane candidates I would run screaming into the night.

Now I am willing to concede that some of mom's choices could result in stable, albeit dreary, relationships. For one thing, I am attracted to unstable women. The first thing I look for is a touch of madness. My mother, of course, takes the opposite approach. Hence my checkered past and the divergence in our views.

And this leads us to the second point. You may point to Mom's stable of stable women versus my careening set of affairs with various careening women and say "AHA! Mother knows best!" But this supposes that stable is good and careening is bad. For you this may be true. But not for me. I am not into quiet desperation. When I make a fool of myself, which I do like clockwork, I do not mark it down on my scorecard as a failure. Quite the opposite! I am never more alive, never more human, than when I am blushing!

[Editor's note: It is worth interrupting myself to note that Roger and I have been debating for years whether life should be full of ups and downs or as flat as possible. I am a mountaineer, willing to exchange dark days at the bottom of chasms and canyons for the occasional view from the summit. Roger, on the other hand, is a flatlander who strives to get through life as quietly and uneventfully as he can. To be honest, I should also add that after ten years of careening through various canyons, I am in the mood for a more orderly kind of chaos, a long slow careen with a long slow woman. But I'll never be happy in Kansas...]

There is a third and final reason why this scheme of yours will not work. I asked my mother and she will have nothing to do with it!