Potentiometers

How do you use potentiometers? I hooked mine up, but the only input I got was a number that incremented with time(might be useful). I think I might have my variable order screwed up in the input stream, but I put a ton of debug statments in there to monitor what is going on. I seemed to have everything in place. Any suggestions?

3 wires on a 100k linear taper potentiometer

2 wires will be at the ends of the variable resistor and the third will be the wiper that varies in resistance. To use it: one wire will go to one of the +5 pins, one wire to ground and the wiper that varies will go to the analog input pin that you select. In your program make sure you select to have the analog input you are using in the serin command. Thats about it, the value should be directly related to the rotation on the pot.