Dealing with temptation, Oscar Wilde Style

Chocolates, by Jonathan Reyes

Oscar Wilde, the Irish playwright, was right on the button when he said he could resist everything except temptation. I’m pretty much the same, which would be OK, I suppose, except that I’m trying to lose weight and we keep buying people boxes of chocolates and tins of biscuits for when we visit them over the holiday period.
But wait, you say. We are buying these things for others, so how can they make us put on weight? Because we – well I, if I’m honest – constantly say, “Look, we’re not going to X until next week, so why don’t we start those chocolates ourselves and buy them another box nearer the time?”
Last night I did the only thing I could think of to put an end to this: I threw away half a box of chocolates and half a tin of biscuits. I felt pretty good about myself, doing the right thing and all that.
But this evening, I suddenly thought: “What if someone pops round unexpectedly? We have nothing to offer them.”
You can’t be rude to one’s guests, so I put aside my own desires and goals in favour of a greater good, and bought this lovely big tin of biscuits….