Geek Talk & Grease
Jared, my young guide in all things cyber, met me at McDonald’s for a quick supper before we started to work on my site and the audio version of The Perfect Song. I look forward to the informal meeting for a couple reasons.
- We exchange information about the podcast world and other things he’s discovered.
- I eat so rarely at places like McDonald’s that in a perverse, somewhat masochistic way, I look forward to eating there.
As we stand in line, he talks while I study the lighted menu boards that hang solidly above the window that separates us from the cooks who are doing God knows what to the various McDonald concoctions. I study the menus because McDonald’s meals are a fairly new thing to me. Every sandwich beckons: “Try me! I look really good! I’d fit well in your tummy!”
I clutch a coupon that says if I buy one sandwich I can get one free. Finally it’s our turn. I decide to go with the chicken ‘n bacon (ever notice that fast food restaurants have eliminate “and” from their vocabulary? If an “and” enters the store it is immediately taken out back and shaved down to ‘n.
Kind of like rock ‘n roll. Chicken ‘n bacon.
“You want it crispy or grilled?” The woman behind the counter asks.
“Grilled,” I say, opting for the healthy style and feeling like an idiot because no one in the civilized thinks anything in McDonald’s is healthy.
“Let’s see. For my free one, I’ll take the chicken nuggets.”
The woman shakes her head. “Can’t have that.”
I’m confused. “Why not?”
“It ain’t a sandwich.”
Of course. Silly me. If it doesn’t have a bun slapped around it, it ain’t a sandwich. I order the quarter pounder with cheese.
We sit down and begin talking. Jared has his standard quarter pounder, fries and shake. He opens the ketchup bag and empties the runny stuff on the placemat in the plastic carrying tray and dabs his fries in the pool.
I tear off a big bite of my chicken ‘n bacon. It’s large and messy, and good. I take another bite and white stuff oozes out of the bun onto my fingers. Hard to tell what it is. Mayonnaise? Ranch dressing? Elmer’s glue?
I want to tell Jared I feel like I’m in an X Files episode but he seems happy swapping his fries in the ketchup pool
We talk and I eat. The sandwich gets messier with every bite. This is something that has to be built into the recipe: “The sandwich will gradually self-destruct until the McDonald’s eater is holding what appears to be a formless mass of processed high calorie sludge.”
I followed the ‘n sandwich with the quarter pounder. It wasn’t as messy and, to tell the truth, it wasn’t as good.
It was also a mistake to eat it.
More later.