I cheated on my wife – this is my public confession. It was triggered by her decision to lose some weight. As anyone who has tried to lose weight knows, this is difficult to do when your partner’s hedonistic food pleasures sabotage your will at every turn.
Thus, there was pressure on me to eat sensibly along with her. I couldn’t do that, so did the next best thing – I appeared to eat sensibly along with her, all the time planning to cheat behind her back with a nearby fast-food outlet.
You see, coinciding with her desire to be Mrs Goody Food Shoes was my desire to break the world record for McDonald’s hash brown consumption.
I didn’t want to taunt her by eating them in front of her, so I decided to be devious instead. My first step was drop our daughter at daycare. This gave me the window in which to commit my deep-fried sin.
When I hit the road, I sent my wife a text about the bad traffic, thereby altering her expectation of my return, and buying myself valuable minutes to consume my sordid potato temptations.
Once I had dropped Charlie at daycare, I took the alternate route home via the local golden arches. I drove past the outlet several times, casing the joint, checking there weren’t any people there to identify me.
I pulled into the drive-thru and, with a disguised voice, ordered three hash browns. When I pulled up to the window, I realised that was a wasted exercise, as the operator could clearly see me.
“You probably recognise me from TV, yes? I’m Paul Ego,” I said, hoping to throw them off the trail.
Once I had the contraband in hand, I opened all of the windows in the car, so the distinctive smell would have no chance of permeating the upholstery and giving me away.
As I drove home, I consumed the goods. Sadly, my nervousness and anxiety completely overrode any joy I was experiencing. Once consumed, the clean-up began. All serviettes, wrapping paper, and evidence of the felony were stuffed into the bag from whence they came.
The steering wheel, gearstick and dashboard were subjected to a complete wipe-down with towelettes, which also ended up in the bag. Yes, I watch CSI.
I couldn’t chance the evidence being discovered in our own rubbish, so I pulled up to a public bin and furtively disposed of it there.
Walking towards the front door, my heart was pounding. I did a mental checklist to make sure I was clean. Satisfied, I strode through the door and gave my wife a hug.
She immediately said, “Have you just been to McDonald’s?” A dog barked in the distance.
“How did you know?” I enquired.
“There’s half a hash brown in your beard.”
That was the end of the affair.
See Jeremy on TV3 on Fridays, 9.30pm, as the always erudite host of 7 Days.
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