My wife and I have but one rule in our marriage: Under no circumstances am I ever allowed to suggest that she has behaved in some way reminiscent of her mother, and she, in turn, may not imply that an action of mine is evocative of my dad. It is not that we don't love our parents; we do.

It's simply that her mother in Manhattan will leave margarine out on the kitchen counter until it melts, is constitutionally incapable of screwing a cap back onto a tube of toothpaste, and still thinks a quarter tip on a 40-block cab ride is generous. Meanwhile, my father in South Florida prefaces every sentence with "you gotta understand," allows enough mold to grow in the guest bathroom to make cheese for the nation of Belgium, and still believes that the role of Woman (meaning the gender) is to care for him (meaning, simply, my dad).

Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly evident that the DNA my wife shares with her mother and the DNA I share with my father make it inevitable that ... we are going to become our parents.

Certainly this is every adolescent's worst nightmare. But an article by Amy Harmon in The New York Times earlier this month pointed out that it is not merely a nightmare. It is destiny. Harmon reported that scientists have now linked the desire to be a daredevil to a gene, just one more behavioral or physical propensity -- along with, say, a predisposition to be heavy or drink too much or dance exceptionally well -- that is a part of our biologic hardwiring.

For centuries, of course, we have all had some sense this was the case. Haven't young lovers been told forever to study the parents of their betrothed? Just think of the number of professional ballplayers whose children have become ballplayers, or the daughters and sons of novelists who have become writers, too. It is not, apparently, all nurture or the simple proximity of the child to the ballpark or the books.

The notion that we are indeed our DNA will actually be a little reassuring for those of us in need of a ready-made excuse for all sorts of compulsive behavior. Conversely, there might be some of us a little frustrated by the implicit suggestion that our achievements are more likely the result of good genes than hard work.

My wife and I found this whole concept terrifying when we first read about it because we envisioned our parents' idiosyncrasies. But then, as we commiserated with each other, we realized something as unexpected as it was ironic. While she was left petrified by the notion that someday she might be handing a cabbie a quarter or reading a newspaper made transparent by oleo ooze, I wasn't alarmed. The truth is, I get a real charge out of my mother-in-law. When I'm in New York on business, we go to movies together or we have breakfast or brunch together. She still reads books -- often. And she writes lengthy critiques of my books for me. So what if the toothpaste tube in her bathroom looks like a perch for a pigeon with diarrhea? She lives alone. It's her toothpaste.

Likewise, we discovered that my wife is infinitely more forgiving of my father's eccentricities than I am. She pointed out to me that there are infinitely worse fates than growing into an older man who likes to cook for his family, doesn't allow a litany of ailments and infirmities to keep him off the golf course, and helps to take care of his friends with Alzheimer's, bad tickers and failing eyesight. So what if the tile in his guest bathroom has more living creatures on it than an acre of rain forest? It's his bathroom.

I'm still not sure that my wife and I are prepared to play the in-law card with each other. But the idea that we might eventually morph into our parents is considerably less alarming.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on June 25, 2006.)

Given my evident interest in all things potty, a friend of mine asked me this week if I was going to try to acquire Paris Hilton's now infamous Bavarian toilet seat.

For those of you who actually have lives and thus do not keep up with celebrity potty seats, here is what was reported.

While riding this spring in a helicopter over Germany, the "Simple Life" star and hamburger spokesbimbo had to make wee-wee. (I have written roughly 2 million published words in my life, but I am quite certain this is the first time I have ever gotten to use that expression. I can now retire happy.) Her chopper did not have a bathroom, however, and apparently mommy forgot to ask the hotel heiress if there was any business she had to take care of before climbing aboard.

This is, of course, the first question my wife and I always asked our daughter when she was a little girl before we embarked upon long car rides or got inside helicopters that lacked bathrooms.

Well, it seems that nature started seriously calling Hilton once they were airborne and wasn't about to be put on hold. And so Hilton ordered her pilot to touch down in the outskirts of a Bavarian village, where she entered a farmhouse, asked the family to step outside, and used their bathroom.

The enterprising farmer has since announced his plans to auction off the seat where the heiress sat.

Now, to answer my friend's question: I have no desire to own the Official Paris Hilton Potty Seat.

What I find most disturbing about this story is not the farmer's presumption that anyone -- even me -- would actually covet a used toilet seat simply because Paris Hilton once sat on it. Given the stuff one can acquire on eBay, I'm surprised the farmer isn't also selling off the bathroom's hand towels and mirrors, and draining his septic tank in search of ... never mind.

No, what I find noteworthy is the colossal sense of entitlement that marks this little escapade. Obviously, there are a great many film and pop stars on this planet who believe it is within their rights to ding cars in parking garages, throw cell phones at one another in nightclubs, and receive the very best tables at the very best restaurants.

But having a helicopter detour to a farmhouse in Bavaria? That is mighty impressive on the Hubris Meter.

Supposedly, Bill Bradley -- former U.S. senator from New Jersey, Rhodes Scholar and Hall of Fame basketball star -- once asked a waiter for a second pat of butter at a restaurant, and was told there was a strict policy: one pat per person.

"Do you know who I am?" Bradley is said to have asked.

When the waiter admitted that he didn't, Bradley informed him.

At which point the waiter asked Bradley if the senator knew who he was.

When Bradley admitted he didn't, the waiter answered, "Well, I'm the guy in charge of the butter."

When I was told this story about Bill Bradley, my first thought was, "That restaurant has one sorry policy when it comes to butter." Then, however, someone reminded me of its real point when she sagely observed, "No good is ever going to come from beginning an exchange with, 'Do you know who I am?'"

She's right. Certainly, everyone desires a little special treatment now and then. Everyone craves a little privilege. Most of us, however, have to settle for that single pat of butter at dinner. At the same time, we are considerably more likely to get a second pat if we ask politely than if we play the "Do-you-know-who-I-am?" card.

I don't ever want anyone to cause themselves irreparable kidney or bladder damage in a helicopter or soil a pair of $180 Juicy Couture sweatpants.

But nor do I want to contemplate this sort of mind-numbing self-importance. Do I believe this tale of the toilet actually occurred? Seems plausible. And if it did, then someday when Hilton really has to go to the bathroom at a gas station, I hope she asks an attendant if he knows who she is, and he responds, "Yeah. I'm the guy with the key to the restroom."

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 2, 2006.)

Recently I had to bury the last of my family's hermit crabs. The old guy -- or girl, for all I know -- had emerged from his shell in the tank and gone to that great tide pool in the sky.

Or, perhaps, that great giant tank full of hermit crab toys and grotesquely smelling scraps of driftwood on which crabs climb in the afterlife. I will miss him, in part because he was the exact opposite of my cats: He didn't turn couches into 300-pound balls of thread; he didn't spew vomit with fire hose-like power against the kitchen walls; and he never once peed in someplace inappropriate. Sure, a couple of times he might have peed in my wife's hand when she was holding him, but my wife thought this was actually rather cute.

In any case, he was the last of our hermit crabs, and after nearly a decade with anywhere from one to three in the tank at a time, we are on hermit crab hiatus. Why? Because they only live three or four years, and then they begin their pathetic, crawl-from-their-shells-and-go-naked death dance. And there is nothing more pitiable than a naked hermit crab: They actually look like they belong on a doughy bun as part of a clam roll on Cape Cod.

Yup, I am such a weenie vegetarian that I actually feel badly for old hermit crabs.

And so you can just imagine how pleased I was when the Whole Foods supermarket chain announced this summer that it was no longer going to sell live lobsters in tanks because it realized the practice just might be inhumane. (In the immortal words of the slightly perturbed adolescent I once was: Well, duh.) Granted, lobsters are merely big scary earwigs on steroids. But, still, I can't think of many living things that deserve to spend their last days on this earth in a tank in a supermarket.

Of course, I also thought back on all the years I had kept hermit crabs in a tank. And suddenly I began to feel like a bit of a hypocrite. Sure, I wasn't keeping the hermit crabs in a tank in the kitchen just so I could eat them. I was keeping them in a tank because in some weird, inexplicable way they kept my family and me company. Not great company, mind you. It's not as if hermit crabs are golden Labs and I was tossing Frisbees for them, or tying paisley bandanas around their tiny crab heads. But they were company nonetheless.

And, in truth, I did allow one of our cats to sit on the screen on top of the tank and drool. This is, arguably, cruelty to crabs. Sure, I wasn't letting the cat bat any of the animals around the kitchen floor like a little ball with a bell, or tease them by getting out the big pasta pots and boiling some water. But I can't imagine the crabs enjoyed the way giganto-cat would block out the sun and pant heavily in their direction.

My sense is that Whole Foods has started a trend that's worth watching. And, in my opinion, celebrating. Yes, lobsters are among the more repulsive things that we put on our plates, and I have no idea what the first person to eat one was thinking. One summer I was a seafood cook in a restaurant responsible for the bistro's signature baked stuffed lobster, and in three months, I must have cleavered close to 500 of the creatures and boiled twice that many. For one season, I was the Hannibal Lecter of lobsters. And while I can't speak to the level of pain a lobster can feel, it's pretty clear that they have sufficiently developed nervous systems that they respond to outside stimuli.

Such as, for example, steel cleavers and boiling water.

Sure, I'll miss having hermit crabs for company in the kitchen. But, for the moment anyway, I'm glad their old tank is empty.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 9, 2006.)

If you saw this summer's children's movie, "Cars," you might have come away with the impression that automobiles can talk and there is just no role that actor Owen Wilson won't take if the price is right. You might also have left the theater angry at the interstate highway system (and Interstate 40 in particular), because of the way these great swaths of asphalt bypassed small hamlets across America and turned them into ghost towns.

At least that's one of the morals that "Cars" offers. The film even has an animated map to make sure that no one misses the point that the actual I-40 is the reason that the fictional Radiator Springs is now the lonely home of over-the-hill hippie vans, loser low riders, and cantankerous old Hudson Hornets.

I happen to love Route 66 -- one of those classic two-lane roads that were made all but obsolete by the interstate highway system -- and have traveled all or parts of it three times with my wife. My favorite patch of asphalt in the world just might be the remaining stretch of Route 66 in Arizona that links the sleepy city of Kingman with the downright somnambulant village of Seligman. When you drive west through the Hualapai Valley at twilight, the desert sun disappears like a hot coal behind the Black Mountains in the distance, and the thin road is as flat and straight as a runway.

But make no mistake, I like the interstate highways, too -- a public works project that actually turned 50 this very summer. That's right, it was in June 1956 that the President best known for D-Day and golf -- Dwight D. Eisenhower --signed the bill that authorized the construction of an interstate highway system.

Vermont would be a different world were it not linked to Boston and southern New England via Interstate 89 and Interstate 91. The demographics tell the story. In 1960, the state had 390,000 residents, an increase of merely 46,000 people since 1900. Yet in the next two decades, the population would increase by 121,000 people, topping 500,000 residents in 1980. In 1960, three out of every four Vermonters were born here. By 1980, it was barely three out of five.

Why did the population grow so dramatically in this period, when it had been almost stagnant for the previous 60 years?

In part, it was the interstate highways. The final stretch of I-89 was completed in 1967, and four-lane highways linked the state with southern New England and Canada. Suddenly it made sense for other companies to join IBM in Chittenden County, and for thousands (yes, thousands) of hippies to migrate here in their VW Microbuses and beetles. Often interstates lead to homogeneity, but here in Vermont they actually made us more diverse. Arguably, we were transformed more in the 1960s than in any other decade in the last 200 years. We were, quite literally, pulled into the modern era by those wide bands of pavement that made it possible to drive between Boston and Burlington -- or Hartford, Conn. and Burlington -- in less than four hours.

Now, like everything in this world that isn't chocolate, the highways did not bring exclusively joy to the Green Mountains. Along with new pavement came neon and sprawl and people like me. I don't believe the interstates on their own imperiled our agrarian heritage or our dairy industry. Actually, I imagine that dairy farmers would be even worse off if I-89 and I-91 hadn't made it possible for all that milk to wind its way south. But there's no question that Vermont is a lot more crowded.

Moreover, the interstates replaced the idiosyncrasies of the mom-and-pop motor court with the bland predictability of the chain motel. The individuality of the diner was replaced by the recognizable fast food franchise.

Nevertheless, more places are thriving than dying in this country as a result of the interstates. And so even though I've gotten my share of kicks on Route 66, I am mighty glad that we have I-40, too.

Happy Birthday, you big sprawling rivers of pavement.

(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on July 16, 2006.)