The Case of the Crawfish Boil Or: Never Cheat On Your Wife

No one said that it was going to be this hard.

Sure, I thought, I would ease gently into semi-retirement in my nice big American neighborhood, do some initial research on organic farming, then head out to the colonies, ready to start my new adventure (though, technically, wouldn’t it be my second adventure since semi-retirement itself was my first?).

I never expected the bitter disappointment expressed by my nice surprisingly un-big pet at having to give up her MacBook Pro Bed. I also never expected my wife to express her disappointment at me constantly bothering her while she worked. So off I went to the gym.

The only problem was that I had gone to the gym the day before and I was not going to suffer through that agony two days in a row. Instead, since it was an irritatingly nice big day, I decided to gently walk around my nice big neighborhood. It was warm, people were out having fun, the sun was shining, naturally I was in a foul mood.

It was then that I saw the fateful sign: “Lunch Special: Crawfish Boil.”

Part of the reason I had tried to gently segue into semi-retirement was that the stress at my nice big American corporation was only contributing to my increasing levels of cholesterol. I had assured my gentle nice big, whoops!, nice wife that I would use my semi-retirement to get into shape and eat healthier. But how could I resist? It was a crawfish boil, as a lunch special. The wife and I had to re-budget downwards since the gentle beginnings of my semi-retirement, so luxuries like eating out in our nice big American neighborhood would have to be curtailed. On the other hand (is there ever any other kind?), I knew that the New Orleans economy was reeling, so I assumed that it was my patriotic duty to help get the region back on its feet by buying crawfish from its namesake restaurant. Plus I knew that my nice wife was out and I had a window of time within which I could discharge my patriotic duty and help those poor people back in New Orleans (the city, not the restaurant, which seemed to be doing just fine, thank you very much) and she would be none the wiser.

I kept the crawfish boil in its clear plastic bag, which I kept in the styrofoam container, which I kept on a towel, all the easier to dispose the evidence before the wife came home. About two minutes into my feast I realized that I had made a mistake. Just because the special price was listed by the pound, did not mean I had to, you know, actually buy it by the pound. The sweats started about five minutes in. Ten minutes and my whole mouth was burning, gently. Twenty minutes in and I realized to my horror that my once formidable gentlemanly appetite was now a shadow of its former self. Twenty-one minutes in and my whole life flashed before my eyes.

My nice wife opened the door and walked in, much earlier than anticipated (ever after all these years, I cannot believe I still underestimate her nice big efficiency).

I was expecting a scene. A few harsh words. Tears even. Instead, she just looked at me sadly, lowered her eyes, and gently walked away, before saying something that sent a chill down my spine as I looked gently at my little-eaten special of boiled crawfish:

“The sad thing is, I was going to take you out for cajun food because you had been doing so well…”

I had learned my first real life-lesson in my semi-retirement: It does not pay to cheat on your wife.