Even though there are lots of dippers in my family, I am so not one of them. I think people should eat their food and drink their drinks and never the twain should steep. I’m not sure why so many people think that their solids and liquids have to come together to make something that can no longer be classified as either.

I guess that’s why I’m not a big dipper. I’m not a little dipper either. I won’t dip, don’t ask me. To me, dipping is pretty close to an illness. As a matter of fact, when you’re soaking a cookie and mess up on the timing, you have to watch a perfectly good cookie with a composition that’s reduced to mush. I call that Oreo-porosis. Vitamin-fortified milk doesn’t help.

And what about when you leave your tasty little morsel even longer than too long and the entire thing caves? It’s a total crisis of dunking. Do you fish for the lost cookie or donut or whatever (not exactly a high-class move), or do you have a little time of mourning and just let it go? And then when you get to the end of your drink, what do you do with the semi-solids in the last swig? Chewing your drink? That’s just wrong.

I don’t know, maybe it’s a pride thing, but I refuse to dip. Good thing I’m not in a Naaman kind of position, huh? Elisha told him to dip in the river seven times to get rid of his leprosy, but he wanted something fancier than your basic dunk. And because of his pride he almost missed a healing!

Pride can cause to miss a lot of great things. But we can learn humility from the example of Jesus. His humility? Now that’s something we can sink our teeth into.

I’m still drawing the line, though, at drinking cookie pulp. I think I’ll always find that hard to swallow.

Rhonda Rhea rrhea@juno.com