One of the best parts of becoming an adult is the moment you realize that you are now capable of getting that thing you always wanted as a kid. Dirt bike? In-ground pool? Tree house with a giant TV? It’s all good! YOU HAVE A CREDIT CARD NOW!

One of the worst parts of becoming an adult, however, is the following moment. That’s when you realize that as an adult, it’s no longer acceptable to spend money on dumb junk. You can usually push through this realization while you’re still single, but if you’re married? Good luck.

Since we’ve been married, Deserae has shot down almost all of my childhood dreams. I usually test the waters by bringing them up like they’re a big joke. So we’ll be sitting on the couch, and I’ll say something like, “Hey I had a funny idea! Can you imagine if we bought a trampoline and put it next to our sun porch? We could open our bedroom window and jump off of the sun porch roof onto the trampoline every morning! Wouldn’t that be hilarious?!”

Then she glares at me as if to say, “I know you’re saying this as a joke, but this is not the first time you’ve brought up the trampoline. I want to assure you that I will have to be dead before you spend a single cent on a freaking trampoline.” Then I nod and a small part of me dies.

Although this routine has repeated itself many times over the years, I was once able to sneak one past the guards. This is the story of the life and death of a childhood dream deep fryer.

A deep fryer, you might be thinking, is a strange dream for a child. However, I was able to deduce early in life that all my favorite foods had one thing in common: they were fried. Fried chicken, French fries, buffalo wings – all fried. And then, one day, I discovered that there was a magical device called a “deep fryer” that could turn ANY food into fried food. Pickles! Pizza! Candy bars! LITERALLY ANYTHING! I had to have it.

Unfortunately, I was not allowed to play with boiling oil as a child. So I filed the dream of a deep fryer in the back of my brain to wait for the magical moment when I would become an adult with my own house and my own kitchen and my own wife who would love fried food.

That dream lay dormant for many years until one November day two years ago when I was creating my Christmas/birthday list. I am cursed with a birthday that falls ten days after Christmas, which means that even though I only want maybe one gift, I have to write down 20 things or people get really mad at me. As I was searching my brain for something, ANYTHING, I stumbled upon an old, dusty file labeled “deep fryer.” I thought about the deep fryer for a bit. I am an adult now. I do have a house and a kitchen and a wife who may not love fried food, but does love her husband and supports his dreams.

I wrote “deep fryer” under “pants – gray” and turn my list into Deserae.

Deserae scanned the list and scrunched up her face.

“Deep fryer?! Yuck!”

“Yeah, we could deep fry everything! Like deep fried bacon! Wouldn’t that be hilarious?!”

She glared.

We could deep fry everything! Like deep fried bacon! Wouldn’t that be hilarious?!

There’s a fine art to getting something for your birthday that your spouse does not want you to have. If you just ask for that one thing, your request will get denied before you finish your sentence. The trick is hiding your true wish in a list of unreasonable/non-existent/even worse gifts. As your spouse grows more frustrated with your scavenger hunt, your real wish starts looking better and better.

Deserae lost the scavenger hunt and I won a shiny new deep fryer.

I decided to take it on a test run that Saturday when my sisters were visiting our house. I had already gone to the store and bought everything we’d need for a night of deep-fried fun – oil, cheese, breadcrumbs, mushrooms and chicken.

I poured the oil into the deep fryer, cranked up the heat, rolled the cheese in breadcrumbs and dipped the mozzarella into the…YOW!!!!!

I learned the reason for not being allowed to play with boiling oil as a child.

A second, much more careful attempt led to my first mozzarella nugget. A black, smoldering mozzarella nugget. The smoke alarm went off.

A third, shorter attempt led to a golden brown nugget. After all that trouble, I lifted the nugget to my mouth, taking a second to imagine how excited 11-year-old Dustin would be for this moment. I took my first bite.

It was fine.

Well, maybe a deep-fried mushroom would taste better. While preparing the mushrooms, I noticed that our kitchen smelled like butt. Deserae noticed too.

“Our house smells like burnt oil!” she said.

“Huh? I don’t smell anything.”

She glared.

“Do you want a fried mushroom?”

“I don’t like mushrooms.”

“Your loss,” I said.

Three minutes later, I discovered that I was wrong. It was my loss.

I was wrong. It was my loss.

This time I knew for sure that better things were coming, because I had saved the best for last. For the main course, I was making 11-year-old Dustin’s favorite, favorite meal: fried chicken.

By this time, everyone was hungry because the appetizers were less than satisfying. I breaded a batch of drumsticks and put them into the fryer for the amount of time recommended by the handy deep fryer quick start guide. Ten minutes later, I removed my drumsticks. My black, smoldering drumsticks. The fire alarm went off again.

On my second attempt, I shortened the time and took them out just as they reached a golden brown color. We sat down at the table and I took the ceremonial first bite. The chicken was raw.

I fried four more batches that were black, raw, or somehow black and raw. My sisters tried to be positive and eat the parts that wouldn’t give them cancer or salmonella, while Deserae smelled the carpet to confirm that the oil smell was now a permanent part of our house.

I thought that was the lowest part of the night. It was not. The lowest part of the night came when I found out that one cannot dispose of used cooking oil in any normal way because it is apparently worse than toxic waste. I poured the oil and burnt breadcrumbs into a Ziploc bag while Deserae held it open, and I am a horrible pourer, so the oil got all over the counter, and Deserae was NOT PLEASED and also our clothes smelled like burnt oil for days.

I did not touch the deep fryer again for a full year.

When I did, it was to fry buffalo wings for our annual New Year’s Eve party. I always make wings for the party, but I hate cooking them in the oven because they get all soggy. Deserae allowed me to fry the wings only if I agreed to a long list of conditions that included keeping everything in the sun porch with the windows open and a fan running while closing the door behind me as fast as humanly possible and YOU BETTER NOT BE WALKING THROUGH THE HOUSE WITH THOSE SHOES!

I agreed to the conditions because that’s how much I love good buffalo wings. I spent the day in the sun porch freezing my buns off, but it was worth it for the tasty wings I sampled. I fried the last wing at 4 p.m. and heated them up in the oven a few hours later when people started coming over. After bragging to everyone how great the wings were going to be, I took my first bite and discovered that the oven had sapped all the crispiness from my glorious wings.

Disappointed, discouraged and dreading a repeat of my previous cleanup, I left the fryer locked in the sun porch for weeks before attempting to clean it. When I finally got around to it I discovered that, whether due to my sloth or Deserae’s sabotage, the fryer no longer worked.

I was not displeased.

LIFE LESSON #58

Some dreams deserve to die.