There’s nothing like a brand new year to get a person in a mood to reminisce about the past.

And since I talk to my mother for approximately an hour each day lately, we’ve gotten into some pretty heavy talks about the past. Only with my mother, being as how she’s borderline insane, you never know what’s coming.

The other day she decided the agenda should include the topic of Marriage, The Things One Learns In.

“I learned so much from all my husbands,” she said. “You know, marriage is really a fascinating education.”

I was playing a game of Spider Solitaire. I moved an ace over to a two and opened up a blank space.

“Oh, yeah,” I said.

I could tell she was taking a deep drag off her cigarette. “You know, if I had to pick, I think the husband I learned the most from was Jack.”

Jack was my stepfather during the years I was twelve to eighteen. He was a nice-enough man who couldn’t help dispensing dating advice. He told me that the best way to talk to guys was just to repeat everything they said to me. That, he said, will make men think you are very, very intelligent.

“Really?” I said to her. “Jack taught you the most? What did he teach you?”

“Well,” she said, and gave a dramatic pause. My mother always talks like somebody who’s on a soap opera. ”I guess the main thing he taught me was how to say cement. Before I met him, I always said it seee-ment.”