McDonald's

Jim Gaffigan is one of my favorite comedians. His humor is dark but family friendly. Unlike a lot of male comedians today, he rarely talks about his sex life in graphic detail. I fully appreciate his discretion. But one thing he does talk a lot about is McDonald’s. "I reference McDonald’s a lot because I go to McDonald’s a lot," he said to a packed auditorium on one of his live specials. There was no response from the audience at all. They were silent. "Oh please!" he admonished us…some in the theatre, some watching, as I was, from the comfort of my couch. "As if none of you have ever been. It's not like I'm telling you I raise puppies for dog fighting. Why will no one will ever admit to going to McDonald's?" At this the audience remained quiet. "And yet...they sell 6.5 MILLION hamburgers a day! That is over two billion hamburgers a year. There's only 340 million people in this country!" At that Jim paused and scratched his head as if confused. "Now I'm not a calculus teacher or anything but I do believe that everyone is lying."

Once started on his McDonald’s bit he was going to finish it. Regardless of whether his audience was into it or not. "And what happens when you can't find a drive-through and you have to walk into an actual McDonald’s and then you see someone you know there?" At this he looks around wildly and pretends to hide behind a pillar. Like Tom Cruise avoiding a deadly enemy in every Mission Impossible film. But "crap!" He's spotted, and comes out from behind the pillar smoothing his hair and acting like he just fell down to earth from planet Mars and is not really sure where he is. "Hey, what’s going on Pete?" he asks his friend.

"Oh. Me? Here?" Pete responds, obviously horrified at being spotted under the Golden Arches. "I just walked in for the free ATM machine. Nothing else. What are you doing here, Jim?"

"Me? I'm just here meeting a hooker. I'm not eating here, that's for sure." And then, looking down at his watch, Jim mumbles "he should be here any minute now.”

Because a straight man, happily married with four young kids at home, meeting a male prostitute in McDonald’s is apparently less morally egregious than eating a Big Mac. 

“We all know better!” he assures us. "McDonald’s will kill you and we don't have any idea where the meat comes from. We are all in McDonald's denial. We wander in as if we don't know where we are. Like ‘oh…is this a library?’ Yes. Sure. It's a library on a highway that's painted red and yellow and has a big spooky clown hovering over it." At this the audience finally starts to loosen up and laugh. "I'll tell you why we go. We go for the fries! Has your mother ever made anything as delicious as one McDonald’s French fry? She has not. They can't be bad for me," he says pretending to daintily pop one small slender fry into his mouth. "Just look how thin they are." 

“But," he assures us from his decades of experience, "the worst part is when it's over. When the only way to digest all that processed crap is to smoke a cigarette.”

Mr. Gaffigan admits that there are people who have never set foot in a McDonald’s. "Sorry Mr. White Trash Guy but I would never," he mimics them saying. "They act like they are superior to McDonald’s. But I'm telling you," another dramatic pause…"everyone has their own personal McDonald’s.”

"Maybe it’s not a Big Mac. Maybe your McDonald’s is telling yourself that a Starbucks Frappuccino is just a cup of coffee - not a gigantic milkshake. Maybe it's devouring crap on TV or trashy tabloid magazines or even engaging in an affair. It’s all McDonald’s. It's the McDonald’s of the soul. Maybe it’s served up in a different form but it's all McDonald’s. Momentary pleasure, followed by incredible guilt, eventually leading to cancer."

“We all have our own personal McDonald’s. What’s yours?" Gaffigan asks us. "That thing that feels so good going down but then afterwards you want to kill yourself?"

I have my own personal McDonald’s. In fact I have several. Social media is the biggest. Gossip. Replaying old resentments ad nauseum. Those are the McDonald’s of the soul that I am currently wrestling with. But I used to have many more. I have friends today whose own personal McDonald’s are watching pornography or binging and purging food or conducting inappropriate relationships. Feels good going down but then…the horrible guilt...the aftermath.  

Just this weekend as I was cleaning out my wallet I came upon proof of my own debauchery and that is what brought to mind the Gaffigan piece. I've been traveling a lot lately and on one of my road trips I left the house before eating lunch. "I'll eat when I get there," I thought. But with the traffic and delays, my GPS alerted me that a three and a half hour drive had now become an almost five hour slog. By hour four I was starving, and wondering where I could get a nice sandwich or salad on the road…when I saw those sinister yellow arches glowing malevolently in the distance. "Fuck it,” I told myself quite clearly, "I'm going!" And I did. I guess I had decided to forget all about this little adventure of mine but then I found the receipt in my wallet. There it all was. The evidence was clear. A Quarter Pounder with cheese, medium fries, a large diet Coke and a medium vanilla shake. 

I'd love to say that I took a bite or sip of each and at the next rest stop threw it all away. But that's not the truth. The truth is that I gobbled up the entire meal and the shake, like an animal, almost before I got back on the highway. "And I don't even eat meat," I reminded myself as I wiped the salt and grease from my mouth. 

As I pulled the week-old receipt out of my wallet my husband walked into the room. I spun around and gasped, crumpled up the evidence as if it was a bag of heroin, and ran to the garbage pail. "What's happening?" he asked, alarmed by my frantic darting eyes. Was I busted?

"Ugh. Nothing," I exhaled loudly. "You just startled me, that’s all."

"Okay," he said, wandering away to do something that was definitely not going to McDonald’s.

I guess McDonald’s was my own personal, literal and figurative McDonald’s last week. I was terrified that my husband or my kids would find out about their yoga-crazy, health conscious, "basically vegetarian" mother and her choices when left alone without supervision. 

I probably won't hit up another McDonald's for quite a while. It felt like it took several days for my body to process all that grease and fat out of my system. But that, of course, is easy to say. 

I'm aware of my natural tendency to be drawn to those McDonald’s of the soul as Mr Gaffigan so eloquently puts it. It's hard to stay vigilant and to “do the right thing" all the time. I sort of wish that McDonald's didn't exist at all. At least it would be easier to resist. But as Jim Gaffigan reminds us, the world needs McDonald’s. How else are we supposed to know when Saint Patrick’s Day is without their Shamrock Shake? 

He has a point. 

And those fries...