What I'm about to say may annoy or irritate you. So if you're easily offended, please skip this column, let's stay friends, and I'll see you next week.

But if you think you're up for a little "tough love," read on.

Still here? Okay, good. Then let's talk about deprivation.

The N.Y. Times the other day wrote in great detail about the genocidal strife going on between the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda, complete with frightening descriptions of the murders and the tortures. They described the conditions of the refugees.

That's deprivation.

The other day, I was browsing through a college nutrition text and looking at some pictures of African children with kwashiorkor, the particular form of protein malnutrition where the bellies are swollen and you can't move their little limbs because it causes too much pain.

That's deprivation.

Only in the United States in 1998 does is seem possible for adults to have a serious discussion in which they label the self-imposed choice to eliminate doughnuts and cheesecake "deprivation."

Let's get real.

Your friend Mary comes to you and says she's having an affair with Fred, a married man, and it's causing her endless grief. Whenever she sees him, she feels bad afterwards. He's always promising to leave his wife, and he never does. When she stays away from him, after an initial period of feeling sad, she starts to feel good about herself; she begins to date other men, she begins to feel hopeful for the future. When she spends time with Fred, however, though temporarily elated, she always winds up being bummed out. She's always alone on weekends and holidays. And then she calls you, despondent.