[dropcap]G[/dropcap]luten Kills,” I read it in a magazine. The article went on to explain bread would kill me if I so much as glanced at it in the supermarket.The nightly news, however, told me the opposite, stating white bread prolongs life. On the broadcast, they featured a one-hundred-twenty-year-old Frenchman tearing up a baguette the size of a life raft.

That same week, NBC claimed alcohol, even in low doses – say, two beers – would age me so fast I’d piss my pants and slip into a coma before the broadcast ended.

The next morning, my wife said the newspaper reported red wine is the fountain of youth. Meet Giuseppe, a four-hundred-year-old Sicilian who plows through two bottles of Merlot each night. Sure, Giuseppe has nine ex-wives and can’t go to the bathroom without an ordained priest , but he’s alive.

What about Chinese elders who’ve been alive since the invention of underpants? Reputedly, all they consume is poultry and gallons of tea. That’s the big secret? I hate to break it to you, Southerners have been eating that way forever. Take my uncle: he drinks buckets of sweet tea and eats fried chicken every night of the week. His blood pressure is high enough to power a nail gun.

I suppose I don’t know why everyone’s trying to live so long anyway. What’s wrong with being dead? I was dead millions of years before I was alive, I didn’t even feel it. Perhaps my ninety-one-year-old uncle had a point. “You wanna know how to live forever?” He cracked open a Budweiser. “Love someone. That’s how.”

Well, that’s utterly ridiculous. But then, what would he know?

He still eats gluten.