Rhonda Dunaway
01-11-2008, 11:34 PM
My husband is very committed to healthy eating and doesn't like it when I take our son to McDonald's. I myself have a complicated love/hate relationship with McDonald's. I don't like the idea of my son ingesting all that fat and salt, but I have to admit, when the winter days have been particularly long and I've run short on ideas for things to do and/or patience, I've been known to pull into McDonald's for a Happy Meal and play time on the tubes for my son and a Diet Coke and a newspaper for me. In my defense, I've tried to limit our trips to McDonald's to no more than once a week. Last night, I began reading 37 by Maria Beaumont, a novel about the trials and tribulations of a suburban mom. The main character notes her husband's hatred for huge international chains like Starbucks and McDonald's and then goes on to make the perfect defense for the restaurant, saying, "And as for his hatred of McDonald's, I've got this to say: If it werent' for the Happy Meal, several thousand women would have murdered their children -- and possibly their husbands. HAPPY MEALS SAVE LIVES." My sentiments exactly, although I never could have expressed them as well as the author!