Cheater Cheater Chicken Eater

I am a gamer.

I wake up in the morning nearly every day around 430 or 500. Switch on the coffee, the TV, and my XBOX360, making sure that my Bluetooth Headset is fully charged and ready to contain sounds of explosions and/or death inside my ears.

I have come to accept this about myself and feel that it is not something to be ashamed of. I am here world, to tell you, that I love games.

A vice that me and many of my fellow gamers have is cheating. Some games are quite challenging and we want the satisfaction of simply getting past a level or unpuzzling a puzzle. I have been using cheat codes ever since Capcom let their 30-life secret out for Contra. I never really even liked using the word cheat, because to me, cheating was something wrong you did at school. Cheating was serious, but this was just... a game.

I am now in my 30's and have only recently joined back into the world of gaming. Turns out that that my mildly advanced maturity and time away from this childhood past time has given me a new perspective.

I have used only a few cheats with my current games. After each use, I was left with this feeling of emptiness and disappointment. I was a little ashamed of myself. Sure, I could reap the spoils of my cheating heart, but it was a happiness ill gained.

Here's the kicker: yesterday as I was wiping chicken grease from my fingers and attempting to finish my son's coleslaw, I had that cheating feeling again. There we were, a small family with a fridge moderately full of preparable food and we had opted for the Colonel. We had taken a pass at real food and nutrition and cheated ourselves out of another healthy lunch. I stood in front of the trash can - lid open and staring at the rumpled bags that previously held our french fries, biscuits, and original recipe breasts. I had an urgent sense to cover the evidence with coffee grinds and banana peels. But for fear that my wife might deem me a little mentally insane, I left the crap where it lay.

This is cheating, too, I said to myself.

My body, like any good video game, gives me everything I need to discover what it needs. I can, of course, choose to circumvent those previously installed clues, choose to ignore the signs and hints, choose to not think. But to do so will leave me empty and disappointed.

Unless I am eating Subway.

Or playing Contra.