LXIII. Breakfast at McDonald’s. December 10, 2020

>driving Lyft

>it’s like 9:30 in the morning

>I pick up this lady who says she is late for work

>but then we see McDonald’s and she wants to stop

>I pull in to the drive-thru

>she says “Do you want anything?”

>I am touched

>no pax has offered me food before

>I say “Wow, thanks, lady! I guess I’ll have a chicken biscuit”

>the box speaks to us

>lady says “Hi, good morning. I would like one chicken biscuit, please.”

>wait what

>lady then says “Wait, hold on. How much is a chicken biscuit?”

>the box tells her chicken biscuits are $1.99

>lady says “Oh. Hold on a minute, let me calculate. A dollar ninety-nine is two, and four, and that’s five…hold on…”

>up in the front seat

>my anxiety explodes like a whale carcass

>all the little pieces tell me

>in unison

>that only the Bankhead Tunnel is a bigger asshole than I

>this poor lady is out here trying to do something nice

>and I just ordered the most expensive thing on the breakfast menu

>I am an absolutely insufferable prick

>she probably only has like five dollars and now she can’t buy her own breakfast god what a fucking elitist son of a bitch I am she didn’t think I would actually ORDER SOMETHING

>and then the little pieces of gore sprout little arms and legs like Mickey’s broomstick and go skittering around in my brain making that little asshole symbol with their greasy little fingers

>I can’t take it

>I say “Lady, don’t worry about it, it’s all good. I’ll make up the difference.”

>she says “Hold on, I’m calculating…and two, and four…”

>and then, oh my god, and then she says

>”Okay, let me have eight chicken biscuits.”

>…

>”and four hashbrowns. And two, um, bacon biscuits but put the bacon separate.”

>what the fuck just happened to reality, y.all

>my skittering pieces of blubber are thunderstruck

>dumbfounded

>poleaxed

>unable to coalesce

>I am not an asshole

>or I am an asshole for assuming she was broke

>I don’t know what I am

>perhaps she knows nothing of McDonald’s

>and therefore took my order as an endorsement of chicken biscuits

>or maybe she is just fucking with me

>between the ordering and the receiving

>she tells me she is buying breakfast for her coworkers

>since she is going to be late anyway

>and suddenly I feel like an asshole again

>but only in comparison, because this lady is such a saint

>so when she tells me they forgot the hashbrowns

>I spin the car around real quick and get back in the drive-thru

>this time, she says to the box “I need my hashbrowns.”

>the box does not know who she is

>the box asks if she means to order some hashbrowns

>the box thus becomes an enemy for life

>the lady starts yelling about how she just came through there and she is late for work and she needs hashbrowns

>the box tells her to pull past the second window and wait for the manager

>this really sets her off

>up in the front seat

>my psyche prepares for battle

>it divides into several bickering monkey-tribes

>some want to stuff fireworks in a whale carcass

>some want to leave this lady at McDonald’s because lol

>some start chanting “Worldstar”

>and there is always that one monkey telling me THIS is the absolutely perfect time to kill myself

>the manager comes out

>he is a big, attractive dude

>has a bag in one hand and a ten-piece nugget box in the other

>he leans on my car like a state trooper

>the lady is tensed up like my dog when she meets another dog

>manager says “I’m sorry, ma’am, that we forgot your hashbrowns. We also forgot the bacon, but here it is, separate like you wanted.”

>then he smiles

>and the lady is dazzled

>and all she says is “Some of my coworkers don’t eat bacon like I do”

>and two-thirds of the monkeys in my head die on the spot

>and off we go

>the rollercoaster ends at her place of work

>it is a fish-and-chicken place

>a rundown, end-of-a-shitty-strip-mall fish-and-chicken place

>it is the kind of fish-and-chicken place in which one might find

>if one were not too white-livered to visit its neighborhood

>the most delicious fish and chicken available in a two-hundred-mile radius

>and she is gifting the entire staff with chicken biscuits from McDonald’s

>I can’t

>I simply cannot