Once again, they're laughing

The illusion is shattered, if it ever even existed.  The illusion that my children should have of me as the perfect mother is gone.  

During breakfast in Plainfield at Larry’s Diner this morning, (which has excellent food, by the way) my mother chose to share one of the more embarrassing stories of my childhood with my children, over our breakfast of eggs and ham.   

It conveys one event in a long line of humiliating things that have happened to me.  I was about 12.  Some of you may remember that McDonalds had come out with a contest to win a Big Mac t shirt.  To win the contest, you simply had to harness the courage to stride right up to the counter and sing “two all beef patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions on a sesame seed bun” under a certain time limit.  That’s it.

How simple!  Even I could do that!  I had practiced and practiced and had polished my Big Mac song to a competitive time and I was ready.  That t shirt was all but mine.  They surely had never heard anyone sing it faster.  I would probably be asked to do a commercial.  Everyone would know of my special talent. 

My long suffering mother took me to McDonalds one day so that I might give it a try.  We chose the Crest Hill McDonalds for the mortification.  Savvy readers might notice mortification and McDonalds start with the same letter

Entering the McDonalds my mother nudged me up to the counter and before I knew it, and more importantly before I lost my courage, I was at the counter loudly belting out my version of the Big Mac song to the gum-smacking, bored looking cashier behind the counter.   She stood there with her head cocked, letting me sing it out and when I was done; I looked at her, hoping that I sung it under the time limit…

“That contest ended a week ago.” she said snarkily.   “Are you going to order?”

There would be no tee shirt.  No free Big Mac.  No commercial.  I had just sung a song in front of not only the amused McDonalds crew, but also several hungry customers who were studiously avoiding any eye contact with me.   It seemed like the McDonalds workers got a little more industrious with their napkin filling and ice replenishment.

It was over.  I had sung a song that would win me not a t shirt, but years of humiliation with a large side order of embarrassment.

However, something good has come out of that debacle at Mickey D’s almost 33 years ago. My kids laugh so hard when they hear a story like that about their mother that they have tears running down their faces.  Watching them, I laugh so hard I get tears in MY eyes, and my husband laughs so hard he gets tears in HIS eyes, and on it goes. 

And there we are, the day after a wonderful Christmas, my daughter’s 21^st birthday, sitting at a table as a family and laughing our fool heads off. 

I wish I could go back in time to that 12 year old version of myself and let her know that the embarrassment would wear off, she’d get better t shirts than the Big Mac T shirt she tried so hard to win, her barely breathing social life would recover from that catastrophe, and she’d (eventually) be able to go back into a McDonalds without needing a Xanax.

I would also tell her to avoid ordering a certain fish sandwich at the Burger King in Melrose Park, but we’ll save that for another day.