I don’t do this very often.

It was a Thursday night before vacation, a little over a month ago, and I found myself sitting alone on the couch. I had the house to myself. No, this isn’t going where you think it is. Pervert.

My wife had taken the kids somewhere to do something – I forget what – and I was ignoring Two-and-a-Half Men while doing some work on my website. Then a Dairy Queen commercial came on. I usually have no problems ignoring such commercials. Usually.

It was for the Blizzard – they sure push those things, don’t they? Anyway, I’m not big on Blizzards, but it had been a couple of years since I’d had something that I really do love: the Peanut Buster Parfait.

Being that I had the computer on my lap, out of curiosity I typed “Dairy Queen calories” into Google and discovered that a Peanut Buster Parfait contained 730 Calories. I don’t do a lot of Calorie counting anymore because I’ve just reached a point where I pretty much know what and how much I have to eat to stay where I’m at. If the nice little lines on my abdomen start to fill in then I know I need to run more and drink less beer. Pretty simple.

Anyway, I took a moment and did some quick math in my head trying to figure out where I was at for the day from a caloric deficit perspective and finally just said, “Fuck it,” grabbed my keys and dashed out the door.

DQ was a five-minute drive away and I pulled up to the drive-through to realize that I’d left my wallet at home. Well, crap, I guess it wasn’t meant to be. But, wait! I could raid my parking meter money. I opened the coin compartment and saw just barely enough one and two-dollar coins mixed with a few quarters to pay for a PBP with about 15 cents to spare. The gods had spoken.

I made my order and pulled up to the window to receive my treat and I noticed a sign in the window that said Buster Bars were on sale: buy one box and get the second box half price. I wasn’t considering it; I just noticed it. If you don’t know, a buster bar is kind of like a PBP in bar form that you can take home and cram in your freezer and pig out on at your leisure. I think there are 12 in a box.

I got my PBP and drove about 50 feet and parked. Nights with Alice Cooper was on the radio and as I popped off the lid and dug in the spoon he introduced Fire Woman by The Cult. The Peanut Buster Parfait was finished long before the song was. I inhaled that thing.

Oh, man. It was fucking good.

It kind of made me wonder why I’m so anal about my diet. I lost faith in my ability to resist junk food for a moment: Screw abdominal definition, I want to eat more friggin’ ice cream. Life is too damn short. In fact, I could race home to get my wallet and come back for two boxes of those Buster Bars. Yeah, now there’s a good plan.

I was about to do just that when fate intervened, as it has a habit of doing if we’re paying attention. A guy weighing at least 300 pounds waddled out of the store. In his hands were, you guessed it, two boxes of Buster Bars.

I fled.

That won’t be my last PBP, but it will be a while before the next one.