I’ve been hiding the fried chicken from you.

Now I know what you’re thinking: How could you do
such a thing to me? My love for juicy chicken coated in a
crisp crust knows no bounds. Whether it’s a thick, crunchy
coating with eleven secret herbs and spices or paper-thin
crackling skin that unites with the flesh underneath to
achieve that cosmic oneness so coveted by fried chicken
aficionados like myself, there is nothing—I mean nothing—
I’d rather be doing in this sweet, fair world right now than
sinking my teeth into a golden brown thigh, feeling the snap
of the skin against my lips, the salty golden juices dribbling
down my chin. If you’d only let me, I’d eat fried chicken for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and several meals in between.
And therein lies the problem. As passionate as I am, I’m a
man of science, and in order for me to perform truly
scientific tests on fried chicken, the stuff has to stick around
at least long enough for me to document and measure it.
This simply doesn’t happen when you’re in the vicinity. For
the past year, I’ve resorted to waiting until you’re out of
town before cranking up the deep fryer to do my testing.
You come back from trips with the smell of chicken fat still
lingering in the air, the bony remains of my experiments
sitting at the bottom of the trash can.
It’s cruel, I know, and I promise, dear, that I gain only a
small bit of sadistic pleasure out of doing it. Do I not make it
up to you by supplying you with increasingly better
versions of fried chicken on special occasions like
Christmas or Colonel Sanders’s birthday? Fact is, you’re not