Oh Cassie, Cassie, Cassie!  Cassie posed the question on a media post, “What feels illegal but isn’t” and my mind immediately went to tater tots.  Tater tots?  Anything that feels illegal but isn’t…probably involves food but tater tots?  Where did that thought come from?  Why is my mind a runaway train derailing because of thoughts of tater tots?

“All the good things in life are immoral, illegal, or fattening.”  There are many variations of the saying originally attributed to Frank Rand but tater tots?  I don’t know the last time I’ve had tater tots.  It has literally been years.  A side order at a local restaurant…with a southern pimento and cheese dip to go with it.?

Oh pooh!  I want them now, with or without the pimento and cheese, and in copious amounts.  The power of suggestion is strong and I am so weak.

I’ve reached that GPS location on my pathway of life that suggests immoral or illegal probably…probably aren’t going to happen.  Illegal is possible I guess, immoral?  I should look up the definition for immorality just to make sure.  Wickedness, evil, debauchery, perversion…okay…fattening as in gluttony, I got that one, but tater tots won’t be illegal or immoral unless I steal them.

Is there some way I can steal the tater tots and combine it with debauchery?  That would be the trifecta.  An orgy of debauchery involving stolen, fried tater tots.

“Our naked bodies dripped with Crisco and stolen tater tot crumbs as the light danced across our distended bellies. We were fat and finally satiated in our prison cell, joyously burping from our tater tot stoked revelry.”  An incarcerated, naked, Rubenesque crowd dripping in oil is not the mental picture I need this morning, yet, there it is.

I admit, there is something about crispy fried, perfectly salted tater tots that makes me feel like I might be getting away with something illegal…but done right, they are tasty. Tasty but a killer.  My arteries are closing just contemplating them.  Oh nooooo!  Now I’m visualizing them smothered in sawmill gravy.

I don’t know when to quit so it is easier not to begin.  I lied, I do know when to quit…”You mean that’s all of them?  I’VE EATEN THEM ALL!!!  OH, THE HUMANITY.”  I truly have no willpower.

I’m the same way about ice cream, specifically milkshakes.  Something else that feels illegal.  I keep my addiction controlled by not keeping ice cream in the house.  I’m a thirty-minute drive from the nearest emporium of gluttony, an ice cream parlor, so if I don’t have it in my freezer, I’m pretty safe.  I admit to opening the freezer door and gazing longingly at the empty space reserved for butter pecan or chocolate chip mint…peach?  Vanilla? STOP IT!

When I break down and buy a half-gallon…it calls to me.  I can literally hear its seductive Marilyn Monroe voice calling from the fridge, “Eat me…eat me…ARE YOU DEAF!  COME EAT ME!”  That’s while I’m already eating a thick, chocolate chip mint milkshake and as you can tell, it starts out like a siren’s call, but it finishes as a screaming banshee.

Left to my own devices, I will eat the entire half-gallon at one sitting.  My wife is now tying me to my recliner and looking for beeswax.  She knows I’ll end up on that “Rock Candy Mountain” quicker than you can say, Odysseus.

Good food is my “What feels illegal but is not” Achilles heel.  Who am I kidding, it doesn’t have to be “good” food.  I’m sorry Linda, I did eat the last…fill in the blank.

I hate to admit it, but Cassie’s media post has old Paris of Greek Mythology limbering up his bow and arrow…I just don’t know why instead of an arrowhead there is an old fashioned, red and white checkerboard, paper boat filled with tater tots covered with sawmill gravy.

No sense walking to the fridge, there are no tater tots or ice cream…but tomorrow is a shopping day.  I just have to figure out some type of Trojan Horse to sneak them past my bride in.

Americans consume nearly four billion tater tots yearly.  That’s thirty-five thousand tons of tater tots.  The average may go up if I have my way.  Thank you Ore-Ida.

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For more of Don Miller’s meanderings, https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0veH8Qsf0rEMd5TiBmn6Zd0vMtZABIY8cRxLHaDbc5yLMSzy4PNFCDl-g