There was a day — well, a whole sequence of days actually, more commonly known as my youth — when I wasn't a fat ass. Before we go any farther (Or is it further? Word is not correcting me, so I don't know what to do… Let's just keep moving,) I want to make it clear that I'm not calling myself a fatass. No, that would be rude. I'm calling myself a fat ass: that is to say, a person who makes dumb choices who also happens to be fat. (For the record, Word wanted me to correct fatass to fatwas, which I considered to be wholly inappropriate, so I decided not to make the change. I decided this because I am a human and Word is a program on a computer, which, while being somewhat useful at times, doesn't have the right to vote, and can't go on dinner dates with my wife. Come to think of it, nobody better be going on dinner dates with my wife except me or maybe one of her girlfriends.)

Absurd parentheticals aside, I want to be clear what this "article" is about.

My wife.

Me and my fatness, and my desire not to be so, and my starting the Mediterranean Diet for the first time, and my liking it okay, and the still overwhelming desire to drink beer and eat granola cereal, which is not in the Mediterranean Diet, is not the issue. At least, as far as I know, it isn't.

You see, I expressed this desire offhandedly to my wife after my latest dieting failure. (Carnivore, specifically the Lion Diet, for those of you keeping score, which would be weird for you to do, since you might only be seeing this because you subscribed to my Medium page, which by the way, is shaping up to be a disjointed and confused affair — much like this "article".) (And where should the period go there? I mean, back there where the quotation mark and the parenthesis culminated so violently? I am unsure, and yet again, Word is not correcting me, so I think I'm in the clear. OF COURSE, Word could just be sore about all those remarks earlier regarding voting and dating my wife, so I have to consider that.)

Um, where was I? Oh yes. My wife put together the diet plan for me. I have, over the years, fallen into the habit of trusting this woman. So, when she brought the prepared grocery list and accompanying meal plan to me, all printed and planned out, I didn't really take the time to look it over; instead, I just drove to the store where people buy food and started buying food.

I grabbed a bottle of red wine. (For those who are not aware, and apparently this includes my wife, red wine is a staple of the Mediterranean Diet. A STAPLE, I SAY!) In response to the sudden and unexplained appearance of a bottle of moderately priced vino, my wife's face assumed that quality of disapproval I've grown so accustomed to seeing — the type of disapproval that serves as a prelude to words that I will most definitely find objectionable.

She did not disappoint. "You can't have that," were the words she bludgeoned me with.

When I inquired why I, a man grown so tall and unfortunately large, was not allowed to "have" the wine, she responded that I shouldn't have the wine. To which I reminded her that her initial response to the bottle in the buggy was, "You can't have that." Which, I don't need to point out to smart people such as yourselves, is not the same as "shouldn't have." See the difference?

Now, for the exceptionally observant in this audience, the deviously cunning deceptiveness of my wife is at the forefront of your mind right now. "Phillip," I imagine you saying, also I imagine you having a French accent for some reason, "you've fallen victim to your wife's trickery yet again."

I imagine this as if you were familiar with our relationship and, therefore, comfortable using the term "yet again" based on your prior observations of our marital interactions. I imagine you to be a close friend of my family — originally from France, let's say Corsica, which, according to the LLM that I just asked, and unapologetically said "please and thank you" too, is the birthplace of Napoleon. I imagine this would be a good subject for small talk when you come over for a bar-b-q.

Yes, back to the trickery. My original complaint focused on her maneuver against my desire to drink wine, and in that effort, calling into doubt my freedom to make said choice. She allowed the force of my defense to culminate, then, like a Shaolin warrior-monk, took the force of my blow and seamlessly redirected it to a dispute over a word, which, when ultimately resolved, would provide ZERO satisfaction to my initial complaint.

This is all to say that as I was putting the wine back on the shelf, she graciously acknowledged her mistake and confirmed that I should indeed be allowed to have the wine if I had chosen to do so. But, since I have not chosen to do so — she could stop looking at me that way.

Anywho, what's this all about again?

Oh yeah, olives and lean meat and mixed greens and oil and fish.

No, wait, it's about my wife and her characterized dissimulation.

And I am powerless against it, outclassed except in retrospect.

She's right. I'm fat. Not that she says that, but her eyes…

My problem is that it's hard to fight when you're fat. I mean, I used to box and do MMA a little, and now, when I imagine myself doing that, I start to breathe heavily, and a dreamlike anxiety falls over me. I sweat in an air-conditioned room, for criminy sakes. It's so easy to get fat and so uneasy to get unfat. (There! Just at the end of the sentence, Word finally gave me a red squiggly line under unfat. I was beginning to think that I'd burned that bridge. Maybe Word heard that I say "please and thank you" to another, more highly advanced algorithm.)

And now I fear that I've gone and downright done it. By referring to the other one as "more highly advanced," I've completely pissed off Word. (Please forget that I said "more highly advanced." That's just bad writing.)

(Where were you at on that one, Word?)

Um.

Okay, have a good one,

Phillip