L minus the Cool J.

I'm not going to kid you, gentle readers, I'm having a bit of trouble starting this Blog. I was thinking of starting off with something like "I remember the time I punched Racism in the kidney... that was sweet" but I wasn't diggin that. Too completely pointless.

I'm pondering Love. I was wondering if I've ever Loved anyone. I would say "no." I love my mom. I love my brothers and sisters. I love my athletes and I love my friends and family. I love the guy whose coffee I just randomly bought. He looked cold, and his jacket had a hole in it. And this Gingerbread Latte really IS too good not to share.

I think sometimes I just need to start writing.

I'll just jump into it. Love is not a feeling. Its a choice. People get pissed off when you say that. Because we've been raised on after-school specials and the OC and "The Notebook" on screens in houses where parents let their children learn morality while they are chasing careers in directions that veer like a) "women drivers on cough syrup" (Annie Spruell gave me that), b) "two bottle rockets tied to a shoe" (Trevor, the 8-year-old in Starbucks two tables away from me contributed that gem), or finally, c) "a dog chasing a mailman with a right leg 4 inches shorter than the left (That gem was given to me by Bethany Rose "don't make a perverted joke about my last name" Pettit).

Movies like Hitch, pretty much any collaboration of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, or any movie where the audience doesn't see more than five minutes after the courtship, though rife with zany and awkward Ben Stiller moments they may be, don't give us an accurate idea of what "love" is. They tell us about Attraction and Connection and Caring. But Love? Not so much. They're what I would refer to as "emotional pornography."

To be absolutely honest, they really are a form of pornography when you think about it. They're completely idealized, over-simplified, staged and utterly unrealistic. No one ever really talks like that and the music tends to be cheesey as well. But I digress...

As I said above, Love is a choice. It's a choice to be loyal to, care about, and put your feelings below the needs of, someone else. Come what may.

Oh, and lets discuss "come what may." The "what" is short for "whatever" as in "come whatever in the world that could possibly come, we don't care. It won't shake my resolve to love this person." Possible things that may come: Halitosis, a big fat gut, alcoholism, jiggle in the thighs, cancer, annoying wheezing laugh, quadrapolegia, colostomies and their corresponding bags, losing a job, children, loss of children, a third chin, Disease, depression, an obsession with Dungeons & Dragons, a taste for expensive jewelry/bling, receding hairlines, proceeding waistlines, loss of hearing, the inability to cook a simple bag of popcorn without burning it, dammit... That's a short list.

When you marry someone, you're making a promise to continue to make that promise again and again and again and again. And then some more.

And I've never done this. I've had my fair share of relationships, and I've given up on every single one of them thus far. Sometimes it was my choice, and believe-it-or-not, sometimes it wasn't. But there's one thing in common of all my relationships (besides the fact that I was in them... [sad face-melting-into self-deprecating laugh]) : I've given up on them all.

Right now, I feel like I'm noodles on a rolling boil. I'm everywhere and everything but settled, but eventually, I know that I'll get to the point where if I'm thrown against a wall, I'll stick. (That's a metaphor, everyone.)

Here's to being Al Dente. Here's to making it stick. Here's to choosing to give up the right to choose.