McDonalds Found

All I want is a Sprite on ice - without having to get out of the car.  It should be easy, but I live on Chicago’s North Shore.  Eleanor is home sick with a stomach virus today.  I want to drive my pajama clad Kindergartner to get a Sprite without removing her new doggie slippers or leaving a pile of puke on the floor of an unsuspecting Walgreens.  

But I’ve never actually seen a McDonald’s around here!  Our strict zoning laws carefully guard our pristine, boutique, ‘all-American’ and yet not too common way of life.  We who live in the North Shore have zoned ourselves right out of the all-American convenience of fast food. 

Since I’m still new here, I do what I always do, I check Google Maps for “McDonalds.”  Surprisingly, I find there is indeed a McDonald’s only two miles North in the village of Winnetka.  “How’d they get that one through the city council?,” I wonder to myself as Eleanor and I drive by Lake Michigan sparkling with an autumn blue.  

Thirty minutes and multiple u-turns later, I understand.  Hidden behind a quiet tudor facade with tidy white trim and gables is a petite yellow arrow pointing into the parking lot.  No big arches.  No neon signs blaring - 

“McDonalds has landed.” I circle the parking lot looking for the drive thru window.  It does not exist. I spot the small door with only a miniature yellow M painted on the glass. I haven’t come this far to not get Eleanor’s Sprite.  

I park precariously close to a shiny black Mercedes and gather Eleanor into my arms.  People are spilling out of the door, crammed in multiple lines. Junior High girls in UGG boots flip their hair and wait next to Latino workers in worn T-shirts that say things like “North Shore Lawn & Garden.”  A new truckload of landscape workers, fresh from blowing piles of oak leaves onto the curbs of multimillion dollar mansions, file into the small door.  The line is now too long for the door to close, and the crisp November air makes me shiver.  Waiting in line, I catch the eyes of a familiar looking mom with Prada sunglasses on her head.  She looks away and back to her children. Making eye contact with me means confession that she, too, is in McDonalds eating french fries.  Or maybe, she just didn’t remember my name.  

I find it strange, in a culture so divided between those who have and those who work for those who have, that the McDonald’s line has created common ground.  Maybe there is something equalizing in those hot steamy fries that celebrates our common humanity more powerfully than our well guarded differences.

Like this fast-food restaurant hidden in sophisticated architecture, we too disguise our common indulgences that are not as refined as we would like to be.  We carefully craft an image- through Facebook updates, clothes, music, and books- to tell the world who we are.  But are we really that person?  Will we have the honesty to admit we are willing to stand in line for fries as long as the golden arches are not standing on Sheridan road?