The dreaded birthday party

Well, today you may have heard the sounds of the world closing in, or at the very least, seen the sky darken and children running in terror. No? Didn’t see that? Me neither. This was actually what I thought would happen if I ever set foot again in the Golden Arches, you know the place I’m talking about. Or heaven forbid if I chose as a caring parent to feed this sub-par food to my precious children or unborn baby. I would sooner give them a cigarette and say “Light up baby!” than take them to the axis of evil to eat. But as all weird ideas go, they must be challenged at some point. So it is with my obsession to stay clear of the most popular fast food restaurant in the world. I even cringe to call it a restaurant. To me, a place that I would consider worthy of that title would have food that won’t kill you. Call me crazy. Okay, some of you already have.

My daughter Eden was invited to a birthday party there recently, for her BEST friend. We couldn’t even try to skip it. Eden would never hear of it, and if I had said we couldn’t go for some lame reason, she’d surely never forgive me, and more than likely be telling her shrink in twenty years about the time her mother didn’t let her go to her best friend’s party all because the food was less than desirable. So of course we accepted the invite. For two weeks I fretted over whether to take all of us there or let my husband take the two older ones. After all, he jumped at the chance to go, he knows I’ll never go with him, or even be able to reconcile that in our marriage if he went just for lunch on his own some day. Yes, I have problems. The day came. At 3 o’clock, my fast food lovin’ husband says, “Well, you going?” I decide it wasn’t worth it to make our baby Canon stay home. After all, he’d never enjoyed the goodness of artery clogging fries and chicken part nuggets. Why not!

The whole way over my heart is racing, and I am praying that they don’t keel over right there in the restaurant due to heart failure. It really bothered me.

I do have valid reasons by the way for my freakish behavior. I have a friend who is a nutrition expert and she does an experiment with a hamburger from this establishment. It is three years old and looks as though she bought it that day. Shouldn’t food go bad? Not even the bread is moldy. It’s much more effective if you can see it, but try to imagine. I believe food should at some point break down.

As we were there, not only did I allow my precious treasures, who God has entrusted to me by the way, to eat this C-R-A-P, but I actually ordered something; the least offensive thing on the menu, a grilled chicken something. I am still telling myself it was really chicken. It’s not as though we are in another country where the eating of domestic animals is common; hard to tell though sometimes. I ate my food, and you know something? I survived. No really! I actually didn’t drop dead then and there. None of my fellow hippie, granola friends died of shame. My husband said, “We could come here once a year!” Yea don’t count on it mister. The worst part was, my baby Canon, who has boycotted chicken of any kind in the past couple of months, devoured the nuggets. GROSS!!!! He’ll eat that slop, but not Weir, TX BBQ?!?! That boy has something to learn about culinary taste.

We left the ‘restaurant’, unscathed, and full. The sun was shining, the birds were still singing, and you know, I believe my husband had a little spring in his step. Maybe once a year wouldn’t be bad. Maybe I could lighten up on the choices for fast food. And maybe, just maybe, hell will freeze over tonight.