McDonald’s

Mondays have been hell all year. My students go home for their three day weekend and return to school like it is a brand new experience. They have bags of chips they sneak into their desks. Today I threw away an entire bag of gummy bears that had fallen out of someone’s desk. One girl today brought a damn remote control car and actually took it out of her backpack to do what with, I have no idea. During our language arts lesson, another girl interrupted my reading to ask me what I did for Easter. I almost cried. She hasn’t been to school in over a week; she reads like a first grader; and she isn’t even pretending to be engaged in what I am trying to teach. Then during math, some kid told me that he wasn’t doing math because x and y coordinates were college math. He said he might do his work for fries from McDonald’s. By the time the bell rang, I wondered if I had the stamina for the rest of the year.

When I got home, I noticed that my son had not done the yard work I had asked him to do. He was asleep on the couch and the garbage was still overflowing, plus he had opened the last can of La Croix. I asked him why he hadn’t done any of the chores. He said, “Chores?” And then he said that the voices were tormenting him. I didn’t even respond. I went for a bike ride.

When I got home from my ride I fell asleep and had a dream that McDonald’s was sponsoring a writing contest about first visits. I woke up all freaked out that I hadn’t preread tomorrow’s reading assignment and I am unprepared to make it engaging and then I started thinking about my dream and what if McDonald’s did really want stories about America’s memories of visiting the Golden Arches for the first time. That would kind of be fun.

More than going to McDonald’s my first time, what I remember is when McDonald’s was built in my hometown. There was a little Mexican restaurant in the spot that was torn down to make the parking lot for McD’s. My dad liked Maria’s and was irritated that a good restaurant was disappearing for a hamburger joint. When McDonald’s finally opened, the line stretched out the door and down the sidewalk for more than a week. My family didn’t join the crowds, but everyone at school was talking about going to McDonald’s. Kids at school were wearing plastic green “watches” with Ronald McDonald’s face. The face popped open to reveal a compartment. My friend put her pencil sharpener in hers. I never wanted anything more.

When my mom finally did take us to McDonald’s, the lobby was still packed with people. My brother and I sat in the main dining room on a little table under a big plastic tree with a face and fake apple pies hanging from the leaves. There was big mural on the wall with 3d figures of the French Fry guys, and the Hamburgler, Grimace, and Ronald McDonald. I remember wanting to touch the characters on the wall. But I sat at the kid’s table, waiting for my mom to ease through the crowd and bring my 35 cent cheeseburger. I was completely enchanted.

I wasted a lot of time tonight thinking about how McDonald’s was always kind of backdrop of my life, even if the food was always something I could take or leave. My sixth grade teacher gave out coupons for fries and drinks for reading goals. I’d hang out there in high school with my friends after dances. My friend, Mary Ann and I spent an entire summer collecting the 4×4 vehicles in the Happy Meals and doing our chemistry homework in our junior year. My kids played in Playplaces while I worked on my master degree work and McDonald’s was always a go to pit stop on road trips because of clean, safe bathrooms. And even though, I haven’t had a hamburger there in decades, McDonals’s is definitely a hallmark in my life. I wonder if they still give coupons to teachers. Maybe my students really would work for fries? Huh. Maybe it is worth a try?