“Get outta here!”
“Seriously!” she explains, “the grains of pepper get pushed into the hole by the circulating radiator fluid, and then the hot water in the radiator makes the pepper expand to seal the leak.”
Why did I take auto shop instead of home ec? All we learned in shop was how to accurately throw S.A.E. sockets at each other, and how to install new tires on the shop teacher’s Buick Skylark.
“There’s a McDonald’s at the next service station, I think,” says Zoe, who is forcing me to love her more and more by the minute. “I hope we have enough water left in the rad to get us there.”
“There’s one way to find out!” I say.
I reach for the cap on the radiator and give it a hearty twist.
Angry, hissing green water explodes skyward. The radiator cap hurtles somewhere into the upper stratosphere. Hot water surges Old Faithful-style, blasting against my chest. The volcanic discharge knocks me onto my back.
I roll around frantically in the roadside gravel, screaming things like “Ooo-ooo-ooo! Eee-eee-eee!” and other manly utterances. I tear off my steaming black shirt and throw it on the ground. I jump to my feet and prance up and down on the shirt until it has become a shredded, mucky component of the roadway.
“Are . . . you . . . okay?” Zoe gasps, as I finally stop gyrating and slump against the driver’s side door.
“Uhh . . . I think so.”
I feel as if a nuclear warhead has just passed through my torso, but I have only a red patch on my skin to show for my suffering.
“You sure you’re okay?” Zoe asks again.
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
She lets out a shaky sigh, followed by a stifled giggle.
“Your burn is shaped like Whistler’s Mother!”
Under normal circumstances, a man is hormonally required to get very pouty when a woman giggles at his injuries. But this is Zoe, the most attractive woman in the universe, so I let it slide.
I retrieve the rad cap from where it has landed, and return it to its benevolent position atop the radiator.
“If this old engine overheats and explodes, we’ll just have to think of it as a mercy killing!” I say.
Against all odds, the pickup sputters all the way to McDonald’s without further incident. I’m in as much danger of exploding as the old truck, since I have been holding my breath for the last few kilometers.
“I have to use the washroom,” Zoe says matter-of-factly. “I’ll meet you out here by the picnic tables. You go and get some pepper and some water for the radiator. And some food, if you don’t mind. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving!”
Perhaps not coincidentally, I am also very hungry. We are becoming soulmates, I think! When Zoe is hungry, I am hungry, too!
My momentarily restored spirit plunges again into darkness, though, as I plod into McDonald’s. Apparently, every human being within a hundred-mile radius has simultaneously felt a craving for a Big Mac. A chain of humanity twists like a heat-dazed snake all the way from the entrance to the serving counter. Six or seven recent graduates of puberty race back and forth behind the counter, haplessly attempting to appease the burger-starved masses.
A hand-lettered cardboard sign above the menu board offers an apologetic explanation for the droplets of sweat that congregate on my forehead:
OUR AIR CONDITIONER IS TEMPERARILY BROKE.
SORRY FOR THE INCONVEEN TROUBLE!
A fat guy stands directly in front of me, gushing rank sweat from every fold and orifice. He wears a faded tank top, has tattoos on his forearms and thick, curly hair on his enormous shoulders. He utters goddamn every few seconds. He is the kind of guy you often see mulling about in back road junkyards. I hope that if, God forbid, he decides to hurt someone, it isn’t me.
“What’s taking so goddamn long?” he hollers. “Goddamn this heat! Goddamn this lineup!” He enunciates each goddamn in a way that makes me wonder whether or not God actually has damned this restaurant to the flames of hell. It’s certainly beginning to feel that way. Sweat is stinging my eyes.
I stand at the tail of this writhing human python as it slowly slithers towards the counter. More people have packed in behind me. Inescapably bright images of fun ol’ Ronald McDonald and his happy McDonaldland buddies imbed themselves on my retinas. My stomach growls in agony, twisting as if it’s hooked up to some medieval torturing device. Heat, hunger, and my newly acquired subversive attitude are beginning to overtake me. I am on the verge of irrational behaviour.
The proliferation of “goddamns” in the general buzz of conversation is increasing at an alarming rate. Someone shouts: “The goddamned drinks should be free, it’s so goddamned hot in this place!” Voices from other spots in the line grunt in agreement.
Tempers rise. The greasy smell of mutiny saturates the air beneath the Golden Arches. Terminally McHappy carnival colours slash at my senses from all directions. In tiny lettering at the bottom of a large picture of Ronald and the Gang, I read: “The names and likenesses of McDonaldland characters are registered trademarks of the McDonald’s Corporation.” Corporation!
A-ha! So this is a corporate conspiracy!
Through the humid haze, I see a frantic fourteen-year-old struggling with a stubborn milkshake machine. There is a loud popping noise, then pink, syrupy goo spits out in all directions.
The teen hollers several awshits before finally disabling the spewing beast by pulling its plug. Covered in a sticky mess, the kid yelps, “Sorry folks, shake machine’s busted!” and retreats into the white-tiled void behind the counter.
Under normal circumstances, this would been a moment of classic hilarity. The tension would have been broken. Everybody would have shared a laugh at the kid’s expense.
But no one cracks a smile. Everyone stands like statues, arms folded. The fat guy with the furry shoulders starts hollering.
“No shakes! No shakes! I been waitin’ here for half an hour! I wanna fuckin’ shake! I wanna fuckin’ shake!”
This is certainly a sign that things are about to spin out of control. The fat guy’s goddamns have turned into fuckin’s. This is not good.
Surprisingly, the fat guy’s order (four cheeseburgers, a large fry, and oddly enough, a large hot coffee) is delivered without any major incident. If anything had been wrong with his order, there would have been certain chaos. Revolution would have been unstoppable.
The kid behind the cash register crosses his arms across the front of his blue-and-white striped polyester uniform. “Have a nice day!” he oozes, as if he truly believes that the fat guy’s mood can be salvaged by his happy-ass McDonald’s customer-manipulation training.
The counter boy grins cockily, having bravely protected McDonaldland from certain pandemonium with his diplomacy.
“Next!” he croons, tipping his triangular paper cap forward like a cowboy hat. After that near miss, he feels sure that he can take on anything that comes his way.
He is wrong. I am next in line, and I am feeling subversive like I’ve never felt before.
“Hi,” I say, grinning like I’m trying out for the part of Alex in a stage production of A Clockwork Orange.
“I’d like, um, several Big Macs, a few large, frosty beverages of some kind, many many crispy golden fries — ”
The kid behind the counter raises his hand in the air like a harried traffic cop.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t serve you. Our rules do not permit us to serve customers who are not wearing a shirt or shoes.”
I look down at my chest. Oops, no shirt. I forgot about that.
“But, but,” I stammer, grinning stupidly, eyes bulging, “I’m wearing shoes!”
The kid looks at me with the warmth and compassion of a constipated Gestapo officer.
“I am going to have to ask you to leave, sir.”
My sensibilities are trickling away.
“Aw listen kid. I’ve had a rotten day today . . . ”
I grope desperately for something that will
convince him that it is his humanitarian duty to serve me. Suddenly, miraculously, my mental soundtrack fires up an old TV commercial jingle I heard when I was very young.
“Listen, buddy, remember back to about 1981, when the McDonald’s slogan was ‘You Deserve A Break Today?’”
I am greeted with a Tabula Raisa face.
“Well, uh, couldn’t you give me a break today? Just this once? Please?”
“Sir,” he gasps, “the rules are the rules. I can’t serve you because you aren’t wearing a shirt. If you were wearing a shirt, I would be happy to give you a break. But you aren’t wearing a shirt, are you? So please step aside.”
I began to feel delirious. All the McHappy colours began to close in on me. Surely he would take pity on me if he understood the circumstances!
“But, I can explain! The fan belt in the truck broke, and Zoe took off her pantyhose, but then the radiator exploded on me, and I threw my shirt on the ground so it wouldn’t burn me, and by the time I finished jumping on it, it was full of gravel!”
“Please, sir,” he moans, looking at me as if I am something a mongrel has just thrown up, “I don’t want to have you thrown out, but the rules are the rules.”
Who the hell does this little twerp think he is? Mayor McCheese’s top deputy? Chief Magistrate of the McDonaldland Justice Department?
“Listen, Captain Hamburger, you had better take my order,” my voice becomes a shriek, “or else I am going to cause a commotion! You hear me? A commotion!”
He stares at me like McDonaldland’s own Dirty Harry.
“Either get a shirt on or get out of here, asshole!”
As soon as the word asshole leaves his lips, I spin around to face the waiting crowd.
“Did you hear that? Did you hear that?” I scream at my comrades in the long lineup. “This Nazi Youth tells me that he won’t serve me because, God forbid, you have to have a shirt on to be served! Even if it is hot enough in here to fry a cheeseburger on your own forehead!”
The crowd gasps in collective empathy.
Ha! Not so cocky now are you, thou zit-faced pawn of the corporate elite! Step up and feel the wrath of the masses, thou servant of evil masters!
The kid pleads desperately with the rumbling crowd.
“Listen! It’s not my fault it’s hot in here! I’d like to serve this guy, but he has to be wearing a shirt! There’s nothing I can do! They could fire me!”
Using reason on this crowd, though, is about as useful as trying to drive ants away from a picnic basket by throwing sugar at them.
“C’mon, junior,” comes a voice from the rising din, “give the guy a break!”
“Yeah!” says another.
The kid must have been the top graduate at the McDonaldland Academy, because he refuses to give in. With courage that would make Ronald McDonald flush with pride, he suddenly starts screaming while waving a drink dispensing nozzle in the air.
“Listen, pal,” he hollers, “either you get your ass out of this restaurant, or you’re gonna get it!”
“Get what?” I cackle menacingly, my face hovering inches from his.
“Get this, shithead!”
Before I can retreat he blasts me in the face with the dispensing nozzle.
“Aaaaaaugh!” I yelp, frenzied and helpless (If you have ever had a pressurized stream of root beer shot directly into your eyes, you will understand my reaction).
My feet lose traction in the slick of soda, and I hit the floor with an awful slap, but only after careening off a life-sized statue of Ronald’s pal Grimace (Grimace, as you will recall, is the McDonaldland character who looks like a globular purple fungus).
“Next!” howls the crazed counter boy, still gripping the dispenser nozzle, a stream of fizzing ammunition trickling down his forearm into the sleeve of his uniform.
Several other customers rush to their fallen comrade, me. Unfortunately for peace and order, I have unwittingly landed atop a pile of ketchup packets.
“Good Lord!” a woman shrieks, “he’s bleeding!”
“No, no, It’s only ketchup. I’m okay,” I try to say, but what actually escapes from my mouth is an unintelligible gurgle, since my lungs are half-filled with foaming root beer.
It’s too late to start preaching peace anyhow. The fat guy with the ugly temper jumps atop a garbage box, tears off his tank top, and hollers, “Look, no shirt! Look, no shirt! Gonna take my food away? Huh? Huh? Gonna take away my hamburger! Huh? Ya gonna?”
Others in the crowd start removing their shirts as well, as a show of solidarity I suppose. Karl Marx would have loved every minute of this, but I just want out.
Beer-bellies swing forth unrestrained; sweat-stained T-shirts cut circles through the air like helicopter blades; ketchup and vinegar packets pop like revolutionary pistols. A couple of women, to ensure that the cause of women’s equality is not lost in the fray, remove their shirts — a development that certainly does not go unnoticed.
I drag my ketchup and pop-stained body towards the exit door. I have become a symbol for the burger-starved masses, a figurehead in what will surely rank right up there with the Upper Canada Rebellion in future editions of The Canadian History Book. I have just caused the McDonaldland Mutiny.
A good, hard smack in the head, courtesy of the tile floor, has delivered my brain back from its heat-inspired vacation. My strongest instinct now is to get as far away from here as possible before the police arrive with tear gas and billy clubs, looking for the guy who started it all.
A pail-sized cup of Sprite lands on the floor in front of me. I grab it, for use as surrogate radiator fluid. I also snatch a few packets of pepper.
Zoe is sitting on a plastic picnic table outside.
“My God!” she cries, “what happened to you?”
“There was an uprising. I got shot in the eyes with root beer.”
“What do you mean, an uprising?”
“Some maniac went berserk from the heat. He started ranting and raving, and pretty soon the whole crowd went nuts! It was crazy! I thought I’d be killed!”
Okay, so I misrepresented the facts somewhat, but I’m afraid that the uprising I have just created is not exactly the kind of subversive activity that turns on girls. I have bent the truth yet again. Biology is warping my morals. The fact that Zoe now has her arms around me is just accelerating my moral decline.
“My God! How awful!” cries Zoe. “People can be such animals!”
We decide to skip the anti-fur rally, considering that we’ve just narrowly escaped an ugly insurrection. Also, neither of us is sure that my truck will make it all the way to Ottawa in one piece.
We go to a Disney movie instead, and, as we leave the theatre, we both agree that it was very cute and amusing, despite the fact that the Disney corporation is one of the richest on the planet. After the movie, while sitting under the stars, kissing each other in the open box of my truck in the middle of an empty parking lot, I ask Zoe if she’ll go to the prom with me.
She says yes.
We’re going to rent a stretch limousine for the occasion, and Zoe is going to buy a white satin dress with pink lace and white gloves. I’m renting a tux with a top hat and cane.
We are not abandoning our subversive ideals, though. We’re not going to clap when our principal gives his dinner speech, and we’re both going to wear black sunglasses.
Long live the revolution!
Tristan’s Quarter
(First-year, university)
This is the dorm room where I live. The skinny guy lying on the more neatly made bed is my roommate, Tristan. I am deeply concerned about him.
Beside his bed he’s got a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare. You can tell by the unbroken spine that he has never actually opened it, but he keeps it near his bed just in case he ever needs it.
“Shakespeare impresses chicks,” he once told me. “My brother says that every guy should have Shakespeare on his shelf just so he can hold his own.”
If you want t
o know the truth, though, holding his own is about all the action Tristan ever gets. To the best of my knowledge, Tristan has never brought a female back to the dorm room we share. Come to think of it, I’ve never actually witnessed a conversation between Tristan and any female which has lasted for more than a few syllables. I think he once mentioned having a girlfriend in high school, but he’s never said anything about her since.
Tristan keeps nine hundred or so comic books hidden beneath his bed. There’s a Captain Kirk uniform in his closet. He has highly animated debates with himself. It is not these little idiosyncrasies, though, but something else which has made me begin to worry about Tristan: he believes that he can find the answers to the most pressing questions of destiny by merely flipping a quarter.
“You’ve got to understand the principles of quantum mechanics and synchronicity,” he explains, “to understand how the seemingly random act of tossing a coin into the air can be used to predict one’s future. The motion of all objects, spaces, ideas, and emotions are interconnected, you see. A tossed coin can land with only two results: Heads up, or tails up . . . “
“What if the coin lands on its edge?” I ask.
“Don’t be difficult, Dak. The uncertainty principle would account for that unlikely possibility. May I continue?”
I shrug. It’s fairly obvious to even a scientific illiterate like myself that Tristan has gleaned his data about the interconnected nature of time, space, and destiny more from sci-fi comic books than from anything by Stephen Hawking or Carl Jung.
“All right then,” he continues, oblivious to the rolling of my eyes. “A coin can either land heads up, or tails up. Only two possible results. A question which is posed in such a way as to elicit only a yes or no response can produce only one of two answers. Therefore, the variability affecting both incidents is equal, and as such, there is a meaningful connection established between the two events.”
I ask him: “What if the answer to your question is maybe?”
“The answer, dear Dak, can never be maybe.”
I pull a quarter from my pocket.
“Let’s test your theory, Tristan. Heads, you’re psychotic maniac. Tails, you’re a drooling retard.”
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