My Unthinkable Love

It's moments like these that I feel inspired to write. I am sitting in a McDonalds and it's around 9:30, just about to start into some homework. And I find myself wondering at the mystery that is McDonalds. This is the institution that has been the example of horror for nearly every documentary and book on food industry disasters, capitalistic greed and health issues that I have read, yet I find my self relentlessly drawn to this place. Granted my menu opportunities have shrank drastically (the only food I feel inclined to order is a black coffee without a plastic lid) but I still can’t help to feel love toward this place. Tonight I am sitting on the barstool chairs near the windows. The table directly in front of me is hosting two teenager boys engaged in a pokemon match, the table next to them has a happy family sharing a moment over some McFlueries and go one more over I find a man covered in tattoos sitting with his wife, munching on a cheeseburger.  The diversity is amazing, no one sub culture has claimed McDonalds which is what makes it so approachable. It’s a flourishing ecosystem, the rain forest of restaurants. And the available WiFi and coffee house feel calls deeply to my nature and appeases my short budget. I am perhaps a sorry excuse for an animal enthusiast but I just can’t shake the feelings. McDonalds seems to nearly have a soul in my opinion. Ask me what I think of McDonalds and I will say, without blinking, that it is an oil consuming black hole turning unthinkable trash into edible crap that is making North America a place full of fat pigs and they do this by standing on the backs of poor farmers, desolate immigrants and horrifically abused animals. But remove the logic and the facts and boil it down to the feelings that I really can’t help and I will tell you that McDonalds is a haven. Full of memories of my mother watching me from outside the playroom window, an orange juice moustache, a great new toy in a smiling happy meal box, a gathering place for my high school friends and most recently: a warm building and a place to sit and write, read and plunge into academia. McDonalds, I hate you; mostly because I love you.