One Fine Day as My Father Grilled Sausages

Another funny father story.

About fifteen years ago, my father had triple by-pass surgery. Overnight, my mother went nuts with serving him NON-fat food, so much so that my father developed a new sentence to describe her cooking: "This tastes like crap." After the horror and shock of his surgery (and his new description of her culinary skills) wore off, she eased up on the non-fat cooking. Over the years, however (and much to MY horror), she now ignores all of the low-fat food suggestions and they eat pretty much anything they want to.

This story is about the day, while my parents were still fat-conscious, that my father decided what he really wanted was some grilled sausages.

He asked mom to make the cole slaw. He fired up the gas grill. He listened to the sizzle of the sausages as he placed them on the grate. After a few minutes, he turned the sausages over and saw that they had plumped. Curious about the plumping, he poked one with a fork. Juices flowed out and caused a flare-up on the grill. He quickly closed the grill lid, but that gave dad an idea.

He opened the grill lid again and poked ALL of the sausages. Surely, he decided, the stuff dripping out of his poked sausage was nothing but FAT since the flame licked up so much. And if he could only drain all of that fat from the sausages while they cooked, he could have his delicious meal without fat, right?

And so, my father cooked the sausages until no more juices dripped from them. He stacked them on a plate and proudly carried them into the kitchen to show my mother his sheer low-fat cooking genius.

He was practically drooling. He had waited so long for this--so many dry, baked chicken breasts! So much steamed vegetables! And now: grilled sausage!

He said that when he tried to cut the first one with his fork, dust flew out. His exact description to me (with a look of disgust on his face) was, "Poof. Dust."

And once again, my father laughs at his own actions. He laughs because he thinks it was the stupidest thing anyone has ever done. I laugh because, yes, it was a pretty dumb thing to do, but more than that because my father can laugh at himself.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.