They were promises.
Shining, glimmering, juicy, each sesame seed placed with God-like attention to detail. Cheese just beginning to melt, their yellowed corners bending ever so slightly, like dairy-born geisha inviting you to begin your feast.
I ordered, and opened my box with glee, looking forward to grasping that perfectly round, symmetrical burger. And I gazed inside to find...
But I am getting ahead of myself.
What I really wanted to talk about in this post was something far different.
You see as I was standing there, hands in pockets, fedora tipped low over my brow, I noticed something peculiar about the menu's system of organization. Something that speaks deeply about the American condition.
The two primarily divisions of the menu are as follows.
Kids' Menu - Happy Meals
Adults' Menu - Extra Value Meals
Let that sink in a bit. Let it wash over you like the sudden realization that Santa isn't real. (Sorry, spoiler warning.)
When we were young we didn't need 32 oz sodas, a pound of fries and half a pound of meat. We didn't need paper bags stuffed to the gills with food.
All we needed was four chicken nuggets. A tiny little soda to wash it down with. And a small little flurry of french fries.
And the toy. Oh, the toy! I am sure that somewhere in my family home there is a massive plastic bin filled to the brim with movie and television show tie-in toys.
See, back when we were young we didn't need grand and awesome (Biblical 'awesome', not Ninja Turtles 'awesome') material possessions. We didn't need to gorge ourselves on massive feasts piled high with sides and main courses. All we needed was enough food to keep us running around our neighborhoods, and a toy interesting and personal enough to keep our imaginations alive.
I can still remember back when even a Happy Meal seemed too much for me. I could barely finish before I wanted to go play again. And the toys I had... sure, I was blessed with the good fortune to have a Sega Genesis, but in the end if I could go outside, nature was my greatest toy.
Into our teens my friends and I could still spend hours a day catching and playing with frogs and toads.
Now, though, now that we have entered the real world, happiness is no longer what we want from our meals.
The economy sucks, the job market is shrinking, and all we can think about is high MPG, low APR, and extra value.
No more toys. No more boxes with little mazes and word games on them. Just a massive bag of pornographically perfect food...
Which brings us back to what I was first talking about.
I open up the box containing my double quarter pounder with cheese, the one that I saw crafted to such artisan-like perfection posted on the menu board.
And within I found two malformed patties of beef, cheese sliding off of them, one half on top of the other, both barely on the bun. Grease stained the cardboard, saturating it, dripping off of it. I sighed, closed my eyes, and then looked back up at the pictures. The promises. The perfect, saintly, broken promises.
The funny thing is that this is the reality of the world.
Happiness is simple, easily delivered, uncomplicated. It comes in forms of meager design. A perfect sunny Saturday, a soft kiss from a loved one, a two stanza poem. It is that look you get from a grateful stranger when you let them pull in front of you while in heavy traffic.
Value is the thing you supplant happiness for in your later life. After you have been indoctrinated to believe bigger is better and cash is king. Value allows you to have your sheet cake, and keep your pockets jingling too.
But are we happy? When we wake up in our massive houses with our central air and our plasma TVs, all of which we got at "a really good discount," don't we feel the slightest pang of regret? Don't we miss those days of innocent youth when baseball was our XBox, fireflies were our television, and frogs were our video games?
Don't you miss me?
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