If people would stop monitoring what goes or does not go into other people’s mouths, the world would go around a lot faster.

Miss Manners also finds peculiar the notion that only some horrid prohibition keeps everyone from drinking at every opportunity. And, incidentally, that no one is driving home.

The dismissive reply is a cheerful, “I just don’t like it.” Enjoyment is not a matter for debate, and whether it is the taste of alcohol that you don’t like or its effects need not be stated.

Last night I went to bar trivia with Ed, a fellow nondrinker, so when our team won a round of beers we got 7up instead.

I DIGRESS. Dick Van Dyke is one of my favorite favorites when it comes to classic television, and yesterday’s Sun-Times had a little feature on Van Dyke in honor of a freshly released memoir. (Does it seem to anyone else like we’re swimming in an ocean of memoirs lately? Are they the reality TV of books, is this here to stay?)

He talks about the Dick Van Dyke Show, a sitcom which has aged beautifully and costars the very young, very beautiful, and equally witty Mary Tyler Moore; Van Dyke says he had a crush on her while they made the show together. I learned he underwent treatment for alcoholism and chose to be a public face of something considered, at the time, to be the territory of vagrants and bums.

Plus he has a 39-year-old girlfriend (!!!) and four children who are probably all older than the girlfriend is. “They all turned out great,” he says of his children. “Not a horse thief in the bunch.”

My across-the-hall neighbor Ray and I were exchanging ailment stories (my cold vs. his upcoming exploratory knee surgery = clear winner?) and he said, “You know what would make your cold go away real fast? A little bit of tequila.” He gestured with his forefinger and thumb.

I said I’d give it some thought.

Today at 7-11 on my way back from an emergency food-and-medicine run, I brought an enormous fountain Diet Coke to the counter. While we exchanged pleasantries, the checker said, “You sound real bad.” I laughed and then coughed. “Yeah, I have a cold,” I said. “Diet Coke’s probably not the best cure.”

“You should drink a little bit of tequila,” the checker said.

Then, in the next five or ten minutes, said stranger made me fall for two “Made you look!” tricks.

Can you dazzle someone with gullibility? I think the answer is self-evident. In my defense, he tried it twice more after that and I’d finally caught on.