Your Handy Field Guide to Homo Ursus, Part I

First off, for those of you who got here through a Google misfire, the type of "bears" to which we will be referring in the next few paragraphs have nothing to do with endangered species, salmon, Knut, Gund, or anything that anyone under the age of 18 should be reading out of idle curiosity.

In other words, we're talking adult topics, and I don't mean mortgages and 401(k) plans (although those can be pretty dirty too).

Anyway, with that warning done, we now return you to your irregularly-scheduled diatribe.

With the addition of young, handsome, and virile QuakerJono of Forgotten Beatitudes to a certain....um, pleasure-oriented....portion of the Interwebs, the question has arisen in numerous forums.....what, exactly, is a bear?

I have pondered for several days on this one, having previously been working under a definition similar to that of Justice Potter Stewart's opinion on what constituted pornography: "I know it when I see it." But, given that you aren't me (a fact for which you should probably be extremely grateful), that probably needs to be fleshed out significantly (as befits a bear) for public consumption.

With that in mind, I have settled on the following -- sort of like if the Minnesota Multiphasic Behavioral Inventory and Jeff Foxworthy banged naughty bits and produced a love child.

YOU MIGHT BE A BEAR IF:

1. "Wax" has two meanings - a noun indicating the stuff candles are made of, and a verb indicating what you should do to your car twice a year.
2. You shop at Old Navy, and you don't care who knows it.
3. "All you can eat" is a challenge, not a description
4. You won't answer the phone on Saturdays because it's people asking you to help them move
5. You tried a cosmopolitan once, but that was just to find out what Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha were talking about.
6. In shopping for furniture, "comfort" takes precedence over "matches the wainscotting".
7. Your drag act is a tribute to Nell Carter, Ethel Merman, or Kirstie Alley pre-Jenny Craig.

YOU ARE EMPHATICALLY NOT A BEAR IF:

1. You know what color the rash is when you overdo the Nair.
2. "Mercedes" is German for "would make a good boyfriend"
3. Flannel is fit neither for wearing or sleeping upon.
4. Your coffee order includes more than "sweetened" or "room for cream".
5. You might have been able to change your own flat tire, but why take the risk of making the manicurist cry?
6. "Beer bust" describes, not an event, but what you think of the beverage in question.
7. You couldn't find your last date when you came back from the bathroom because he was standing behind a lamppost.

And here you thought this was complicated.