And the Dog Barked
By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male
I must admit that I am confused. I have learned to accept the fact that Ann,
my wife, constantly monitors my carbohydrate intake, but not too long ago, as I
mentioned in a previous article, she hollered that my lunch was on the counter
and then left in the car. When I got to
the counter there lay eight sugar-snap peas and a handful of Fiddle Faddle™. I admit that sugar-snap peas
sound like her. But Fiddle Faddle sounds
like me and I began to wonder if she had set a trap before she left to test my honesty
and will power. I scrubbed the entire
eating area for cameras, but as far as I could tell I was alone and unmonitored. The unmonitored thing really made me
suspicious because she never leaves me unmonitored when I am around things that
fall into my two favorite food groups, delicious and sweet. Take my recent purchase of See’sTM peanut brittle,
for example. We were in the mall in
Riverdale near Ogden and I happened to walk by the See’s store, an action that
resulted in a serious attack of peanut brittle withdrawal (or pbw as it is known in medical circles). After a short moment of panic, I recalled
that the treatment for pbw, and my
only hope for survival, was to purchase a large box of peanut brittle, eat two
large pieces immediately, and then eat two large pieces every hour until the
Ann wasn’t convinced that my proposed
treatment was doctor prescribed, or medically approved, and so I didn’t tell
her that I had already started the treatment by eating the first two pieces
along with a sample offered by the clerk at the time of purchase. But when we got home, and while I was putting
the car in the garage, Ann audited the box and found that it had been opened
and two pieces were missing. When I
returned from the garage I found that my lifesaving box of pbw medicine was nowhere to be found. After a rather loud verbal exchange, during
which I admit that I raised my voice loud enough to scare our neighbors, Ann admitted
that she had hidden the box. But she claimed
that she had hidden it for me because she noticed that I had been watching
the package closely as though I was concerned that a thief might steal it. Fair enough, said I, but when I asked her
where it was hidden she refused to tell me.
In an elevated voice I explained that to hide the box for me
implied that it was hidden from others, but not from me, at which
time she admitted that she had hidden it from me because she noticed
that I had already had two pieces, and she felt that hiding it from me
was justified by the fact that she was only trying to save my life.
Well, I tried sweet talk, bribery,
threats, tears, and holding my breath until my face turned red, but three weeks
have gone by and she still won’t reveal the hiding place. I tried a substitute treatment of M&M
peanuts, but a case of pbw as serious
as mine needs peanut brittle with equal or better quality than the See’s peanut
brittle that started the withdrawal in the first place. M&M peanuts helped a little, but a complete
recovery would require pbw medicine of
much higher quality than M&M peanuts.
Each time Ann left the house I scoured every nook and cranny I could
think of, but my medicine just seems to have disappeared. After several fruitless searches I began to
research various methods used by police and CIA operatives to find contraband hidden
by clever belligerents trying to avoid being caught in an illegal act.
The obvious technique would be to find a
dog that had been trained to sniff out peanut brittle. The problem is that I haven’t been able to
find a dog that trusts me any more than Ann does, and I am guessing that as
soon as I command “Find,” the dog will take Ann’s side and begin barking at me. When I read this to Ann to give her a chance
to respond, she said that after three weeks she can’t remember where she hid my
precious peanut brittle anyway, so HA!!
For payback I have decided to switch my allegiance to M&M Almonds
and hide them in a stainless steel can in our little garden patch under a
planting label that declares “BEWARE, POISON IVY.”
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