You may think you know someone who's pickier than me. All I can say is that every time I run through my list of edible foods, every single person I've known (many of whom thought they knew someone pickier) has walked away shaking his or her head in disbelief. Shall I run my list for you?

I will eat pizza, steak, spaghetti, bananas, hot dogs, bologna, lebanon bologna, white seedless grapes, hamburger, Caesar salad, green olives, and breads related to the white or rye families. I don't like most other fruit or vegetables. I don't like beef other than filet mignon or burgers (hot dogs aren't really beef), don't like pork or any fish or any poultry.

Poultry tops my most hated list, but probably because everyone serves it so often. A few years ago I told my friend Joan that she'd never seen me become so conversational as when I'm at a public dinner and they put a nice chicken dish in front of me.

All my life I've had this thing against most food. It all tastes terrible. My poor mother tried for years and years to get me to expand my culinary horizons, to no avail. There are a handful (perhaps two) of foods that I will eat, and that's it.

A side effect of my mutant diet is that I fall into phases. For about five years, until just a short while ago, I would have spaghetti for dinner four to five nights a week. In college I had two hot dogs for lunch and two hot dogs for dinner every day unless I knew I could talk one of my friends into buying me a pizza. I had lebanon bologna every day for lunch for at least seven years before college.

Don't get me wrong, though: I don't like my status quo. I hate the fact that I would prefer to have a cardboard sandwich instead of a club sandwich. I hate the fact that I even have to talk about it. More than anything, I know that most of the foods I will eat are bad for me. If I want to live to be one hundred (and I do), I'm certainly not going about it the right way. In a way I'm probably lucky to still be here.

Jean is trying to help me now. She's making me dinner these nights while she's still on maternity leave (except for Sundays, when I make a pizza from scratch), and tonight she started a new program. She's adding one thing she knows I don't like to eat, and I'm going to have it. It was a mild beginning tonight: a spinach salad on the side of my spaghetti instead of my typical Caesar. It wasn't good but I'm still here. And she'll serve it again sometime in the next week or so. We've expanded my horizon by one.

Each night she's going to try something. Before too long we're going to get to the entrée, and before too long we're going to get to chicken. It is inevitable. It is my destiny. And I'm going to do my best to make it work.

Since I was ten years old I've had this motto running around in my head: Ask yourself what's the best you can be, then ask yourself why you're not. This is a longstanding part of my life that could be better than it is, and I'm going to begin addressing the problem now. It's time to grow. Move on.