Lots of Monkeys

I saw her when I entered the drugstore. She was a lean build, black hair, fair complexioned. Something about her just seemed familiar, so watched as she rung up another customer. She looked up, caught my gaze. I smiled. She smiled back.

I went to the back to pick up dental floss and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

Surprisingly, the line had disappeared and I found myself at her register.

“Kumusta,” she said, and smiled.

I smiled back, automatically registering the word as “How are you?”

As I answered her in English, the smile faded. I wondered if I had done something wrong.

How could I answer her in Tagalog? The words flow from my mouth like chunks of curdled milk, leaving a bad taste in the wake of their butchered pronunciation. Soon, the memory of our shared smile disappeared as she treated me like any other customer, sounding almost impatient when I looked for change.

As I left the drugstore, I looked down at the receipt, hoping to find her name. Only her identification number stared back at me. I threw it in the garbage. I wasn’t sure if I was disgusted with myself for not knowing a single word to respond to her, or her sudden change in attitude.

Either way, I had to get the ice cream home before it melted.

Didn’t really expect to compare the McGriddle breakfast sandwich to masturbation, but–oh well.

Blech.

Update & Translation: By “Blech,” I mean, “Don’t get me wrong, I like the sweet and salty combination of maple syrup, pancakes, and really good sausage. It’s just the McGriddle is a textureless mushy, approximation of the previously mentioned combination. Just leaves you wanting the real thing. Basically, it is a pale imitation of the original. Vanilla Coke in the plastic bottle is one example. Another example is a solo activity that you normally don’t mention in polite company.”

So, anyway, now I’m not hungry, but I have that aftertaste where all the McPolymers are stuck everywhere, and my teeth feel like I’m having some sort of dental work.

I’m going to go brush my teeth, and then finish my orange juice.

So, due to a combination of circumstances that led to poor decision making, (my lack of sleep, my hunger, the fact that nothing else is available, my general irritability at the world at large, a review sent to me by a friend about the item I am about to consume, and the desire to get back to some level of comfort that I knew when I was 5 years of age) I am now sitting at my desk, with a small “orange juice” and a McGriddle sandwich.

The McGriddle will be my first foray into McDonalds in what feels like lots and lots of months. Quite possibly–years.

I’m scared. I mean, the logo is branded onto the sandwich. I had the hash brown already, and that was okay. The orange juice tasted like it had been reconstituted fairly recently. If you haven’t heard about the sandwich, it’s basically a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich, but the bread part of it has syrup baked in.

They have got to be lying. I mean, nothing at McDonald’s could ever possibly be subjected to any sort of cooking process such as “baking.” So, orange juice, a sandwich, and a hashbrown only cost me $3.62, and due to the health concerns–

APPROXIMATELY TWO YEARS OF MY LIFE

The worst part about this is that I already read Fast Food Nation.

Off to work.