What About This…? 2.27.2014

By Wayne William Cipriano

Once again, it is not my fault. I am being driven by forces well beyond my control. I am not responsible for my actions. I am speaking about these packed-on pounds from the holidays that continue to hang in there, so to speak.

It is not bad enough that Rosalie is a magnificent baker of all things sweet and delicious and continues this infernal practice with no regard to the pleas of restraint babbled by those around her, but she will, with equal disregard, place these fresh-from-the-oven treats before us blithely suggesting we eat “only what you want and stop whenever you wish.”

Lately, things have gotten worse. Our good friends, Shirley and Walter Jessen, have decided to engage in some devil-inspired competition with Rosalie to see who can produce the most visually appealing, tasty, (and monstrously caloric) goody.

And then, where are those treats, the result of that irresponsible competition, placed? Are they hidden away in one of Rosalie’s secret household caches to be doled out, crumb by crumb, as our over stressed bathroom scale lies about how much weight we have not lost?

No!

They are placed on the island, in the middle of the kitchen, uncovered! A siren song of temptation for any normal human being walking by from one blood-sugar reducing job to the next energy-absorbing chore in serious need of nutritional replacement. Lying in wait, silently beckoning the eye as well as the nose. And as each tip-toing trip through the kitchen passes these delightful stations of cruelty, trips now planned simply in aid of snagging another smidge of fudge, just one tiny cookie, a sliver of pie, a quick handful of cake, who among you will blame us? Which of you will condemn those of us acutely aware of our limitations in the area of gratification-delay but powerless to combat them? Who will join our bombastic bathroom scale in a chorus of “J’accuse!”?

Not you, dear reader, I am sure. Not you.