A Real-Life Horror Story

on April 14th, 2002, at approximately 2:55 PM, I pulled into the drive-thru service area at McDonalds on 32nd St. and Cicero Ave. I was tired from a long weekend spent with my friend Rita and a concert the night before, and very hungry. I thought that all I was in for was two cheeseburgers, a coke and medium fry. What I experienced, though, is something that continues to haunt me, even still, hours after its occurence.

at approximately 2:59, four minutes after my arrival, I was greeted by a drive-thru worker, whose name I do not remember. But if I did remember it, I would withhold it from you to save her horrific embarassment. Her voice came crackling through the drive-thru speaker, inviting me to make a selection from the myrad of options presented to me on the menu. "Yeah, can I have a number 2, cheese and ketchup only, with an orange drink."

I peered into the monitor on the drive-thru menu as she entered my selection. "2 czbrgr meal.... 32oz hi-c.... lg fry...."

.... "$3.55," she responded.

Satisfied, I pulled my truck around to the first window, and paid my amount due. Pulling to the second window, I recieved my beverage. I placed it firmly in my cup holder, and extended my hand to recieve my parcel of food. Pulling away, I was filled with a sensation of satisfaction and exhiliration that one can only achieve after one completes a completely successful drive-thru visit to McDonalds. I parked my car in an available space, and began the eating process.

What an emotional roller-coaster ride life is sometimes. One day you're the captain of the football team, the next day you break your leg and you have to sit the rest of the season out. One day you're a world leader, the president of some far-off land, and the next day you're being run from office by an angry mob. Such was the full spectrum of emotion I was about to experience.

I opened up the bag in which my food had been given to me, and it was if I had released a family of evil spirits that lived deep within the soul of Ray Kroc, the wonderful founder of McDonalds. I reached in, and removed the french fries from the bag. I set them in the cup holder adjacent to the Orange Drink, and began consuming them. Never in my life, up to that point, had I tasted such terror, such pain and suffering. The french fries were soggy, soggy like a fully saturated towel. The salting technique also left much to be desired. It was not that there was too much or too little, it was that the salting situation fluctuated from fry to fry. One fry would be completely immersed, while another would be left bare like a homeless starving somalian child.

Needless to say, I had already began to weep at this point.

It was hard for me to get over the fry situation. In fact, it took me upwards of 2 and a half minutes to do so. But eventually I persevered. I moved on. The first thing I did after I recovered was reach for my Orange Drink. This wasn't something that was going to fail me - and while it's been noted several times by my colleauge sam smith that the taste of the hi-c may fluctuate from time to time, it is only very rarely unenjoyable. (Smith, 43.) Pressing the straw between my lips, i applied a vacum to its tip, expecting a burst of orange madness. What I recieved was a most unkind blow to my person.

What was injected into my mouth was not Orange Drink. Nor was it Sprite, Root Beer, or any other alternative soft drink. It was not coke, not cherry coke, not caffiene free coke classic, it was not even Coke 2. What burst through the straw, penetrating deep into my soul, was diet coke. I immediately started weeping again. I could not believe my misfortune - first I am forcibly raped by a terrible french fry experience, and now this! It was ironic to me that the very liquid I was depending on to wash away the earlier experience was now only worsening it. As the river of diet coke emptied into the resovoir that is my stomach, it met the french fries. I bet they high-fived, before melding into each other, forming a massive element of combined love and disgust. I threw the cup out of my window into the parking lot in disgust.

Needless to say, by this point I had lost movement in my left leg.

Yet somehow, through all of this sadness, I still managed to hold out hope for my 2 cheeseburgers. I reached for one, and unwrapped it. The bun felt right, it was at the proper temperature. It emitted an odor that was similar to many other cheeseburgers I'd had at McDonalds. All was going to be well. And while I had nothing to wash the burger down with, I would simply learn to live with that fact.

Then, I bit down.

First of all, the first bite tore off nothing but bun. I realized, much to my horror, that I was experiencing a patty alignment problem. The patty was aligned towards the rear of the bun, instead of the center, a problem which is usually forgivable, but given the prior misguidances, was simply unallowable. In retrospect, I now realize that I completely wasted one of the 8.5 bites it takes to consume a cheeseburger.

Still, however, I pressed on. I felt that hope may lay somewhere beyond that first bite- somewhere where hamburger meat and cheese would intermingle in a lovely manner with smooth, tasty ketchup. It would be a fruitful land, where things like beverage rape and fry assault had long been banished.

What happened next, my friends, frightened me. Once again, I bit into the burger, hoping for something pleasant, something redeeming. What I encountered was far from that. As I bit into the patty, I experienced much more than hamburger meat, cheese and ketchup. I experienced layers of pickle, layers of onion, and a large amount of mustard.

There have been many days when this has happened to me - they have forgotten to remove the pickle from my burger. And I have let it go by the wayside, because I believe in forgiving people - just like jesus did. Today however, it wasn't just the standard two-pickle layout. I was attacked by 5 pickle slices. It was so thick of a pickle layer that it made an audible crunch when my teeth penetrated its perimeter. This crunch, this terrible sound, travelled effortlessly through my palette and rocked my skull.

Needless to say, the onion did nothing to alleviate the situation. There was so much of this onion - I thought at one time in the consumption process that I might actually turn into an onion myself. At that point, that would have been a better situation for me - for onions do not have mouths. And so I would be spared this onslaught.

The situation only grew worse as a wave of mustard was expelled from the burger arrangement into my mouth. This yellow death, this lemon-colored torture, almost caused my immediate death. I found myself thinking "Is this it? Is this how Pablo Maurer is going to leave this world? Killed at the hands of a yellow scoundrel? Ended by this xanthein beast?" I almost felt sorry for the cheese and ketchup I had requested on the burger itself. For I had now caused their names to become entangled with the likes of mustard, pickle and onion. Poor cheese - it did nothing to deserve this. I could not believe what a horrible person I'd become.

My comrades, it has now been 4 hours and 28 minutes since this occurence. As we speak, I still have not regained movement in my left leg, and I have not yet ceased to weep. I am not sure if I will ever learn to live as a normal human being again - pray for me, my friends. Pray for me, please.


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