Bingeing on the old Mary Tyler Moore Show took me back to my own first job--like Mary, I worked in a newsroom--and led me to ponder what we've lost and gained in decreeing that any type of workplace intimacy is verboten.

Were you forced to take a foreign language in high school? Do you remember sitting through hour after hour of language lab? So many people now speak English, why should we Americans bother to learn Spanish or French or German or Chinese or Urdu? And why on earth would anyone approaching their final years on the planet care if they could correctly conjugate the verb hacer?

I really, really want a dog. Why don't I get one? If I do, will you pay for all its vet bills? Does everyone need to be a doggie parent to a furbaby? Can't you just own a mutt?

Have you ever had a hard time convincing someone that something is wrong with your car, your house, or your computer and they really do need to fix it? Of course you have. I can't help you fix whatever needs fixing, but I invite you to compare your frustrations with mine.

Believe it or not, I've been told I had cancer SIX TIMES. Luckily, five of those diagnoses were wrong. But why were so many doctors so eager to tell me that I had a fatal disease? Is that any better than the way it used to be, when everyone--including doctors--were afraid to so much as utter the word?

Did you play a musical instrument in elementary school? Did you give it up? Why? Do you wish you had continued taking lessons? Is it ever too late to try again?

Are you--or someone you love--in denial about how much you're missing because you can't hear most of what other people are saying? Why are you so reluctant to make a trip to Costco and buy a pair of hearing aids? Why was I?

What's it like dating the star of a reality TV show like The Golden Bachelor? Is there any hope for a woman in her sixties or seventies who still wants to find love before she dies?