When I was growing up fast food was a rare luxury because of several reasons:
1. My siblings and I bickered about what we were going to get which made the process of ordering very difficult for my mother.
2. We usually ate in the car because a) Mom said the inside was full of “germs” and we would inevitably contract some sort of “illness” from the other sneezing kids running about and b) after Mom found a poopy diaper in the ball pit of the play ground, she just had bad associations about the mysterious inside of whatever fast food joint it so happened to be. Because we ate in the car (actually our fifteen passenger van) the inside ended up smelling like the french fries that we crushed into floor in our rush to obtain the delicious greasiness. My mom did not like that…my siblings and I, on the other hand, never noticed.
3. My mother wanted us to live past the age of twenty five.
These rare visits to McGreasy’s were usually en route to some other activity, and in this case, we were en route to our new house with some of our more precious belongings; in the back seat our goat Rose, and several chickens (we didn’t name the chickens because it fostered an uncomfortable friendliness that was difficult to over come once Thanksgiving came around).
Nearing lunch time we were getting hungry and mom found it in the goodness of her heart to feed the mangy hoodlums whining the the back seat.
Pulling up to McGreasy’s drive-thru, mom ordered for us,
“Three cheese burgers, one hamburger, two large fries, six waters (the cup kind not the bottled kind, thanks) wait, make on the cheese burgers a hamburger, make that three large fries, no two hamburgers two cheese burgers…wait be quiet! I can’t hear what they are saying! Okay, okay, two large fries, two hamburgers, three cheeseburgers and one McChicken…okay, can you repeat that to me?”
“Well, Ma’am, let me…”
“MAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!”
“I’m sorry, that was our goat, can you say that again?”
After ordering and receiving our food my siblings and I went through the sacred rite of taking the pickles off our burgers and handing them to our mother, that is, if they made it to the front of the van after been passed through six sets of grubby hands. Most of the time they just ended up on the floor with the fries.
I’m not totally sure why we did this, maybe mom just felt weird ordering a bunch of pickles on the side so she just took them from us….or maybe we just just really hated pickles…hard to say for sure. For this trip the littering of the floor was particularly handy because it took care of feeding the chickens too.
“Mom! Can you grab my pickle! Ew, it’s squishy!”
“Mom, here’s Garrett’s pickle too…”
“Taylor, hold this pickle for me, can you give it to Mom?”
“That chicken just pecked me Mom!”
After the hubbub had died down, and Mom had successfully grabbed all the pickles while driving the fifteen passenger van, with six kids and her most prized possessions loaded into the back (our livestock) the six of us opened our books to read and ate our food.
It was a hot day and we were all tired and full. The wisps of hay blew around the van peacefully, the chickens, nestling on the floor were dozing and Rose was keeping fairly quiet in the back of the van.
Garrett, my younger brother, had a particular penchant for reading while eating, and often was so distracted by his book, his food went unnoticed.
Stretching his arms out to yawn, burger in one hand and book in the other, Garrett lifted his arms above his head and when he had brought his arms down, he noticed a bite out of his burger, turning around he saw the squinty eyed Rose, chewing with a smug expression on her face.
Garrett burst into tears. The precious fast food that we so rarely ate had been half eaten and he felt sorely denied his treat by the evil goat who so clearly had it out for him.
All he had wanted was a burger… maybe a fry or two.
My valiant mother, amid all the wailing from Garrett, offered up her food as a supplement. She probably couldn’t have eaten it anyway, she was having some weird trouble gasping for breath between tears and body convulsions…she must have been really worried about something.
“Rose did whaattt??? AAAHHAAAAA heh heh heh heh…I mean, I’m sorry honey, oh my *GASP* whhhheeeewwwwwwwww!!!!!!!…..ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Anyway, after about a half and hour, mom said she was fine and Garrett stopped crying and Rose didn’t eat anyone else’s food. All in all, it was a successful trip through the drive-thru.