Whose Grill Cover Have Your Tongs Been Under?

Cooking on another man's grill is like sleeping with his wife.

Strange thought? Allow me to explain.

We are in scenic Leesburg, Virginia as I write this, spending the weekend with great friends and their young son, one of The Peanut's three boyfriends. More on that preschool love triangle at another time.

Earlier tonight our lovely hostess was preparing a vat of guacamole for a delectable snack before dinner. She was using an extremely sharp knife to cut the avocados in half so she could remove their large pits. As she worked the kids were in the other room playing with Go Diego, Go dominoes. The Peanut suddenly (and loudly) experienced a moment of selfishness and needed some time alone. I escorted her upstairs where we had a rudimentary review on the concept of sharing. The conversation could not have lasted longer then a few minutes. When we had finished our little review ("But daddy, sometimes kids just don't want to share, that's how we are!") we went back downstairs to find our hostess on the floor clutching her left hand, wrapped in a towel, to her chest. Her skin was pale and her expression pained. Being the Sherlock Holmesean genius that I am I took in these facts, put them together with the knife and half cut avocado that sat discarded on the marbled counter top, and deduced that something very bad had happened while I as away.

Moments later our host whisked our hostess away to the ER to have her laceration evaluated. This left The Wife, The Peanut, The Peanut's Friend, and myself. Our hostess had already prepared the food for dinner before attempting finger removal surgery on herself, so all that was left for me to do was to cook it.

I wheeled the grill out of the garage and set up shop in the driveway. I went into my Pregrill-Start-Up procedure, a list I have honed over many years of trial and error. As I made my way through the list, preparing my host's grill for a symphony of outdoor cooking, a strange feeling began to overcome me. I felt weird, as if God himself were looking down upon me in sadness at a transgression I was making, however unintentional it might be. It took me several minutes to figure out what it was. Not until I had slapped the first naked hamburger patties on the grill did it hit me.

This wasn't my grill I was cooking on. This was another man's grill. The basic set up was the same, but in many ways his grill differs from mine. I suddenly felt myself cringing to adjust the dials that control the degree of the heat. I found myself stealing furtive glances over my shoulder as I cooked, as if waiting for someone to drop from the sky, pointing a finger at me in righteous anger, demanding to know why I was defiling the grill of another man when my own sat cold, lonely, and unused back in Delaware.

And that's when it hit me. Cooking on another man's grill is like sleeping with his wife. It is a shameful, forbidden act, even when you are granted permission to do the cooking. I felt soiled when I was finished, guilty. When I get home...how will I break the news to my grill? What do I say? That the Virginia grill meant nothing to me? That I thought of only my own grill the entire time?

Guys...what do you think? Is my comparison a fair one? Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation?

Girls...What do you think? Is your man as obsessive about his grill as I am or do you think I need some deep psychological help? Or maybe both...

Make a comment...please help me feel better about this unfortunate transgression.