Two bad habits have overtaken me. The first is to assume something is true because it just couldn’t be otherwise. The second is more insidious for a married man. I’m letting my wife tell me I am wrong and while that’s not uncommon, the rare thing that qualifies this a bad habit, is that too often I have to admit she’s right. That makes me wrong.

Now the latest case of my being wrong has nothing to do with my conservative philosophy. Don’t even dream it. Conservatism is anything but a dream world; it is in fact a liberal’s nightmare.

Now if you want to live in perpetual uneasiness and aggravation, go ahead. That is your right. As for me I’ll take the way of a clear conscience. And that is part of the thing that makes me want to correct something I assumed last week.

We spoke then about my newly discovered diet, the “no diet.” Now I’m not backing off of my claim that the no diet works.  Of that I’m sure. The rub comes over my claim that I lost weight on it. 

The odds of that being otherwise to me seemed worse than those of a first place win for the biggest prize in the state lottery. Of course somebody eventually wins that unlikely prize.

It took little time for Helen to back me into a corner for my testimony that I lost weight on the no diet. I had to admit it, she was right. And that made me wrong.

After she read my claim in last Sunday’s Advocate & Democrat she wasted no time in proving how wrong I had been. For according to Helen I did not lose weight in the hospital, I gained a lot of it.

How could that be? I went two days on a piece of dry toast and one tiny egg, followed by three days with not even any water, just that old IV dripping slowly into my arm. Then came two no-sodium hospital meals in a 24-hour period.

Those no sodium meals are real tasty. Sorta like eating this newspaper. With no salt and no seasoning, just dry and ink stained. I just had to lose weight on that, anyone would have done so. That’s a part of the common knowledge we talked about above, a thing that we rely upon daily.

But as it is on rare occasions, this time the common knowledge, and thus my assumption that I had lost weight, was wrong. Helen said so, I denied it, and she said, “I’ve got proof.” And she did; forms for my admission to and my dismissal from the hospital. I went in at 277, and out at 299.

Not possible? That’s what I thought. But then came the explanation. I went in dehydrated, so the first thing to do was to reverse that process. In other words, refill my bodily fluids. An IV and the all-liquid diet were to do that. Now that all-liquid diet was a six-course meal and consisted of broth made with powder and water, coffee, (decaf), ice tea, jello and apple juice. I just had to lose weight on that. But I didn’t and the IV and its around-the-clock flow on liquids was the difference along with the fact that the doctors stopped my daily dosage of a diuretic commonly known as a water pill.

Back on the scales Wednesday and that 299 is back to 277 and falling. That’s ‘cause the No Diet does work.