Every time I used to pass by the McDonald's on West Judge Perez Drive as a child, I would be filled with an unimaginable jealous rage. The cause of my vehement envy was the mob of kids who were sticking their faces out of Mayor McCheese's hat, squealing with glee. How dare they?! When would I ever get to clamber to the top of Mayor McCheese's hat and stick my own pudgy little mug out at on-coming traffic? I was choked with rage. I wanted them all to die.
Once I was at a Wendy's, and there was this old lady who smeared ketchup all over the table she was eating at. The newspaper decoupage design was turned from an antique white to a horrendous pink. The old woman sat and munched contentedly on her french fries, oblivious to the mess she had created.
Once when my Dad took me to Popeye's, there was this hippie guy sitting in the next booth. The hippie organized all of his pieces of chicken into neat rows before he would start eating them. For some reason I was mesmerized. He was probably a serial killer.
When I was in maybe first or second grade, my Dad had bought me a toy apple that was filled with little green plastic worms. We stopped at McDonald's on the way back. As we stood in line, I was struggling to open the apple so that I could play with all of the little plastic worms. The toy just burst open all at once, and the little green worms went all over the floor in front of the check out counter. My Dad was annoyed and we had to stoop down and collect all of the worms so that the customers waiting behind us could order their Big Macs and fried apple pies. I don't know how he put up with me.
I always considered it an insult to my juvenile intelligence that Chuck E. Cheese could be up on stage performing while carrying a pizza tray for us bratty kids simultaneously. Even a six-year-old knows that you can't be in two places at once! The same goes for Billy-Bob and his band of grotesque hillbilly miscreants. (The gorilla who played the piano used to freak me out.) (Rock-afire Explosion!)
When we lived in Houston and would eat fast food several times a week, Jeanne and I discovered a Magic Burger King! We were fighting our way through medical center traffic, ravenous after a full day of graduate school and blue-collar drudgery. We took a turn down a side street to avoid a cluster-f__k situation on Main Street, and lo and behold, that side street fed directly into the rear of a Burger King drive-through! We were jubilant and uplifted in spirits and from that day forward, the Burger King on Holcombe Street was known as 'The Magic Burger King'!
Why am I telling you all of this? Because every time you pass in front of a McDonald's with a play yard, I want you to think about little Reggie Rachuba and his bitter boyhood envy. Every time you order an eight piece box of chicken from Popeye's, I want you to remember that some hippies like to keep their chicken neatly organized. And every time you are famished after a day of work, and are looking for a short cut back to wherever it is that you dwell, I want you to remember that sometimes a greasy, heavily-salted pot of gold might await you just around the corner. :)
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