We Got McDonald’s At Home
These words still burn in the soul of every Gen Xer. With inflation, my Gen A daughter is about to hear these deflating words: We don’t need to stop at McDonald’s. We got McDonald’s at home.
The most dreaded words my brother and I could ever hear my mother or father utter were: we have McDonald’s at home. This reflexive response would crush our dreams of those perfect french fries that illuminated our minds. The worst part is that now that my parents are grandparents, they seem to have a neverending supply of McDonald's money for their grandkids. Once, when I came to their house to pick my daughter up, she was eating a HAPPY MEAL!
She got a Happy Meal when it was not her birthday or Jesus’s birthday but some random day ending with a y! Believe me when I say my face was fixed a certain way, trying to recognize these two people who raised me. All three of them greedily smacked their lips on my childhood ambrosia while I watched McDonald’s less, once again—like in my childhood.
The McDonald’s at-home hurt is real. This is a universal American experience for people of a certain age. We did not have the plethora of fast food dining options when I was coming of age in the 80s. The term casual dining had not been coined to describe restaurants like Cava, Chipotle, Smashburger, etc. We had Burger King, Arby’s, Wendy’s and McDonald’s. We would not see our…
