Peter McKay

This past weekend, my wife took our two daughters away to start spring break early. Our two oldest boys are out on their own these days, so that left me alone for five days with my 15-year-old son until we could join them later in the week.

I was actually looking forward to this. For the past couple years the females in our house have outnumbered the males, so at least for a few days, our house would be one big man cave.

The first thing I planned is that we would not plan anything. My son could play video games or his guitar, or sit on the couch staring into space, for as long as he wanted. I, in turn, would do whatever I wanted, would eat whatever I wanted and would drink whatever I wanted. If I woke up in the morning and wanted a beer, I would just chug one. (I didn't. I swear. But if I did feel like one, I would do it.)

Free of the dominance of the females of the species, we tried as hard was we could, as fast as we could, to regress. We ate fast food — lots of it. I let my son hook his X-Box to the big TV in the living room. Sunday night, when "Celebrity Apprentice" came on, I didn't watch one minute of it.

The one thing I did plan was that I'd eat dessert whenever I wanted. I'd have dessert at dinner, lunch and, once in a while, at breakfast. As we hit middle age, my wife had started to exercise and watch what she ate, and I started to pout and sneak food on the side. She never actually stopped me from getting dessert, of course, but would sit back and shake her head dismissively whenever the waitress asked if we wanted any. I'd decline, too, but only because eating dessert alone makes you look like a pig.

Friday night, I decided to cook us a couple steaks. We would have meat and handfuls of potato chips. No vegetables, no salad. No toasted garlic bread. I left the steaks just a few minutes too long on the grill, though, and when I came back, the grill had turned into a glowing orb, flames licking up from under the hood.

"Is there anything else?" he said. "No vegetables or bread? This is it?"

"Don't worry," I said. " There's tons of ice cream in the fridge!" He smiled and nodded, his mouth covered with blackened shards of what had at one time been meat.

Pretty soon, though, I started to see that without a female presence I might be in a little bit of trouble. I went down to the basement to find the pile of laundry at the bottom of the laundry chute was getting so deep that soon I'd have to give up and start tossing it out with the trash. I decided I needed to do something about it, but then realized I didn't know how to set the washing machine. I remembered buying, and installing, a new dryer a couple years ago, but had never actually used it. I had to hunt up the manual to figure out how to get it started. Likewise with the dishwasher. I'd loaded it up plenty of times, but never actually started it.

We started the week with plenty of food in the fridge, but as the days passed and my son worked his way through the larder like a boll weevil, soon we were pawing through canned goods in the back of the pantry like survivors of the apocalypse. Another day or two, and we'd be eyeing each other up like hungry cannibals.

Sunday night, I took my son out to a local restaurant where we got hot wings and couple of beers — (for me only, of course). When we finished, I pushed back from the table, burped and informed my son that it was time for dessert. My son sat back and shook his head dismissively.

"Oh," he said, "You can go ahead, but I'm not all that hungry."

I sighed, nodded, and started to count, in my head, the days until my wife would be back.

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