Survive The Mayan Apocalypse: Make a Joyful Noise

There are many theories about the end of the world.

My favorite is that on December 21, 2012, in less than two hours, the numerical anagram 12-21-12 will be chiseled via diamond-blade onto a quartz crystal that, once placed atop the pyramidion of Gaza’s Khufu Pyramid, will convert moonlight into a beam that holds the intensity of two suns, which will SHOOT from that summit and travel ‘round the wo—

Sorry… I can’t stop laughing because I just made that up.

What will actually happen tomorrow is that a great confluence of bad predictions will conjoin in what the heroine, Aughra, from The Dark Crystal called, The Great Conjunction.

It’s a Planetary Conjoining of  Human Consciousness, subdued deeply by vodka served at Apocalypse Raves tonight. The Great Conjunction is a global hangover.

There’s about as much science involved in tomorrow’s End Of Times as there is in any socio-cultural prediction. These pseudo-sciences and their ‘allegations’ are so soft, they never develop sufficiently where you can touch their fontanels. 

I say this as the mother of two psych-majors, and as a sociology-major myself.  That’s right: my undergrad work was in English Lit, but I was an English/Sociology Double Major.  This makes my own fontanel twice as soft, which is why I wear a helmet to bed.

Back when I was an ambitious sociology major, I believed in research statistics and was eager to test my own theories.  At the time, I was interested in two things that befuddled me: religion and sex.

There had already been an abundance of socio-cultural research on both topics separately, so I fashioned A Great Conjunction:  I combined the two with the following premise: empirical research will explain, socio-culturally, why there exists a range of sexual noise-making practices among people of different religions. 

I undertook a very Sociological Empirical Survey Gala Full of Research Methods Whose Results Could Be Repeated in a Double Blind, Three Blind Mice Study in which I sat at K-Mart for an hour and asked strangers four ingeniously crafted questions which in no way revealed the purpose of my study:

1.     Are you a stranger?

2.     Do you have sex?

3.     When you have sex, do you make noise?

4.     What religion are you?

The results were remarkable.  First, I discovered there were two religions:  Protestant and Catholic.

The Protestants were the ones who revolted against the guilt, dogma, and oppression imposed upon them by the Catholics.

Catholics were the ones who revolted against the Protestants by declaring them heretics and forbade the saints to have anything to do with them.  Then they set about the business of oppressing and making guilty all the Catholics who were too busy praying to revolt and who believed an impure thought would turn them into fornicating Protestants.

Historical support thus established, I shall reveal my Research Results.

Protestants do not have sex, except maybe once a year, and then they do not make noise. They close their eyes, hold their breath and wait until it is over.

Catholics have sex more often, whistling and shouting and calling by name every major league baseball player since Cro-Magnon Man first hefted a club which, in cave man days, served as the first rudimentary bat and their wives were the first ball.

Catholics educated in parochial schools will, by age 30, do such damage to their vocal cords, they must rely on party honkers, cymbals and tambourines.  If percussion instruments become routine, they move on to the woodwind family.

I realize some people might be offended by these findings.  They might consider them biased, shocking, or blatant, filthy lies.

Therefore I will present my data, with permission from the Journal of Cultural Noise-Making who agreed to publish my results based on me asking them to:

Survey Results:  K-Mart, 1994

Number of Participants:  Two

Anonymous Subject Number One:  Beatrice Langston Braxton Hicks, Duchess of the Duke of Davenport

Address:  1 Country Squire Windsor Court, East Font-La-Roy, New England

Sex:  “How dare you?”

Religion: Protestant

Age:  “Really!”

Anonymous Subject Number Two:  Mary Mae O’Deli Havlocek-Mostacelli

Address:  Apartment 1 Atop the Fifth Avenue Bar, The Bronx, New York

Sex:  “Yes!”

Religion:  Catholic

Age: 27

Question 1:  Are you a stranger?
Mae: Yes I am.

Beatrice: Please, no autographs. I’m only here to inspire the homeless.

Question 2: Do you have sex?

Mae:  I do.

Beatrice:  My bodyguards must strike you.

Question 3: Do you make noise when you have sex?
Mae:  Yes. I whistle and shout and call out the names of every major league . . .

Beatrice:  Boris, come and crush her.

Question 4: What religion are you?

Mae: I am a devout Irish Polish Roman Catholic Italian and I never have sex with Protestants because they were banned by the Pope and they can’t hear the saints shout at them while they are having sex once a year with their eyes closed holding their breath.

Beatrice:  My attorney must witness your death.

Thank you for participating.  Would you like a copy of the survey results?
Mae: You’re welcome and I’d love a copy.  Especially of Beatrice’s anonymous responses.

Beatrice:  Officer.  Read it its rights.

The point is this:  there once was a sociological theory called Naturalism, which was converted to a literary style, but only after it had become an 'Age' debated by history departments. But it meant that you can’t escape your environment and people can’t be held accountable for Merton’s Theory of Relativity. 

Which means that even if Protestants try to make noise, they will only gurgle and their partner will think they’ve gone into cardiac arrest and the mood will be shot for the year.  And if the Mayans are correct, this ‘Year’ ends in another hour -- so your only choice is to convert.  Right now.

If, however, by some unprecedented fluke, the Mayan “theory” is as dependable as my sociological work, have a GLORIOUS day tomorrow. 

And remember:  regardless whether you celebrate Chaunkah at Temple, Christmas at St. Jerome’s, or for us Congregationalists, Christmas-Pong at the Bar, know that we are all equal in God’s eyes, so Make A Joyful Noise Unto The Lord.

Amen.

Today, My Blog Is A Man

Please join me this day, December 20th, in celebrating my blog’s one-month birthday! 

For those of you who have real children, do you recall how you counted your newborn’s age?  At first it was in hours.  An infant’s age can be tracked in nano-metric time this way.  In temporal micrometers.  You can see this in baby-book captions.

“Above: Little Farthquar at 10 Seconds Old! (no, that’s not his umbilical cord. Go Baby Farty!)”  “Baby Farthquar at ELEVEN HOURS!”  “HOUR 24: Going home from the hospital!”

And so it goes, page after relentless baby-book page, until you reach the finish-line where you learn that, after 175 pages, Farthquar coincidentally reached his 175^th hour.

Well, it’s like that with my blog.  (Only it is 700 hours old, thank you.)

Yes.  Today my blog is a man, according to the ancient tradition of My People (the group from  Protestant Bible Debate).  But according to even ancient-er traditions handed down from The Mayans, today is the last functional day of the world.  The end is nigh*.

 (*nigh = 'tomorrow' in Mayan)

This impels me to make the most critical decision of my 54 years. 

Do I blog about bowel incontinence?  

Or making noise during sex?

Seriously, if I were assured that tomorrow, Life As We Know It [On The Internet] Ends, I might as well blog about something I find funny and not worry about offending anyone.

(I know this sounds like 'magical thinking.'  Because it is.  Instead of being sad the world ends tomorrow, I will be sad when it doesn’t.)

Are you ready?  --Flipping a coin--  

Well, bickety-bam!

The noise-making treatise wins.

I will go prepare this for you now.  God knows I’m not going out to buy green bananas or recycle plastic today.

I’ll be right back. 

Green Monsters and Dr. 'V' vs Blues-Clues Serial Killers

Just after high-noon today, I was scurrying about hiding my daughter’s Christmas presents (she was due home any minute) when the call came in from her Chauffeur Dad.

 “Hi!” I chirped.  “I assume you guys are less than twenty minutes away?  Lunch is almost ready.”

“Well, not quite twenty.  There was a minor delay.  I broke a molar right off at the gum line on a chewable vitamin-B, so I’m off to a dental appointment.” 

Did he just say 'at the gum line'?

The man is a super hero. Throughout countless dental and bodily catastrophes for himself and the rest of our family, he’s been similarly understated.  By contrast, if I break a split-end with a hairbrush, someone needs to restrain me to preempt a 911 call.

Less than an hour later, he re-phoned in such a state of serene euphoria, I thought he was sedated.  

This was not the case.

“Carolyn, I am calling from the road now to tell you that Doctor V., my oral surgeon… well, the man is a genius, a miracle worker, an artful magician.  He completed the first phase of a root canal and it was so UTTERLY painless , I mean the way Tom handles a syringe,  the warm rush of novocaine, the Siren Drill-Song … well.  The experience ambled toward enjoyment.”

 “Oh, it ‘ambled’, did it?”

Was that ME… sounding –  Jealous? Just who was this ‘Tom’-dentist, anyway, and what did her V stand for??

“Well, doesn't your procedure sound lovely!  In fact, perhaps instead of ‘sweet nothings’ I can whisper the word … ‘amble’ to you tonight.  Or ‘crown.’”

“Ha ha, you’re funny!”

“Humor is my ambling song--”

“--No, really, babe, Tom is a craftsman, in fact—“

He droned on for ten more minutes until the novocaine wore off.  “Hey, Carolyn? I have to stop by Walgreen’s now. Tom wanted me to get some Ibuprofen BEFORE the novocaine wore off and I’m a little behind the power curve.”

“Walgreen’s?  Can you pick up some conditioner?  I’m having issues with split-ends. And honey, this Tom Person, does she remember you have a medical condition, with your myeloma disorder?”

“Tom is a ‘he’ and, oh, Tom knows ALL.”

“Just like the Magical Oz.”

“I know, right?  Tom even says—“

This went on until he was at the check-out, when I finally interrupted.  “Does Tom think it’s okay for you to take Ibuprofen when you’re already on anticoagulants?”

“Umm.  We didn’t discuss it.”

“And does Tom know you take Zometa each month for bone-building, which can cause necrotizing jaw-death ONLY with dental procedures?”

“An interesting hypothes—“

“Did Tom update your records with the medicines you take in the event they’re contra-indicated in cases of Ambling Warm Syringes and Enjoyable Siren-Song?”

Fortunately our daughter called just then, so I call-waited over to her, “Hi, Abby!  If you’re still waiting for Dad—“

“God no, he broke a tooth. I just wanted you to look at your email cuz I JUST sent you my latest story.  It’s a bleak Noir Vignette about Steve from Blues Clues and how he went mad after his wife and son were murdered by a-–“

--click –   “Jonathan? Are you still there?”

“OH I’m here.  I’m just getting out the Hematology Clinic’s number so they can update my file with today’s DENTAL emergency so I don’t get NECROTIZING JAW DEATH—“

--click--      “—then his brother visited the insane asylum where Steve kept calling him ‘Blue’—“

--click--     “Carolyn?  Did you hear me?  Pantene was on sale.  I hope that’s fine cuz I’m already in the car to get Abby in Salem but before—“

--click--     “Mom?  Are you there?”

“Absolutely, sweetie!  I was just saying that Dad is about forty minutes away, so be ready with all your laundry and perishable food.”

--click—

“—so I’ll put a call into the clinic now, Carolyn.  I’m hanging up.  Okay?”

--click—

“MOM!!  ARE YOU THERE!?”

“Stop shouting.  I lost you for a sec when I drove under a bridge.”

“Oh.  You’re driving.  Boo.  I wanted you to read my story.”

“I’ll read it when I’m back home, in … about an hour.  Meanwhile, have you read my blog?”

--silence--

“Hello?  Abby??”

“Grr --- eck.     _____  bert--    SNIZ-lit--  …  right now …..   --you later, BYE!”

--click—

Really?

Since when did my family become so self-absorbed?

EAT IT RAW

My experiment to boost blog-hits by pandering to ex-students failed miserably. 

There I was, publicly admitting to alcoholism, and ba-zinga:  seven page views. In 15 hours.  Nine of them mine.

So, today’s Journey To Increased Site-Hits shall reveal my Writer’s Secrets. 

As a multiply-published authoress with articles appearing in Wo-Mag, The Phoenix, T & G, plus countless articles in a magazine where I was paid as staff to write articles -- I am often asked by aspiring writers, “Which brand of cookie dough do you like best?”

This is often followed by, “And do you engage in ‘couponing’?”

 I’ve tried to attend both queries with candor.  But for the record, let me state that my answers will STILL be directed at my ex-students at college, to spike today’s hits.

Nestle Toll House far surpasses Hershey’s brand, Pillsbury, plus all generic-sounding varieties like OSoGood, Wicked Fine, and Oh, MMMM-Baby. 

Raw dough is used by growing college students as a vital source of grease from the non-nutritive flammable food group.  And it’s cheap. One tube can feed up to twelve rugby majors, with enough left over to lubricate several joists and spokaine ratchets on X-Box 360 controllers.

Of greater value, and I share this as a one-time recipient of an A-Minus in Economics, is the Law Of Excellent Marginal Returns, If And Only If you go to Shaw’s and purchase their brand of dough (using coupons) – Then, Return It.

Shaw’s Marginal Returns Policy plus Couponing provides a substantial source of income, crucial to beer and pizza delivery.

Shaw’s policy notes that if any of their products are deemed by consumers to be unsatisfactory or actually toxic, there is a Double Your Money Back Guarantee.  (I am about to engage in mathematics,  so watch carefully.)  Say, for example, you purchase three tubes of Shaw’s Chippedy Chocolatey Tube Dough for $1.99 each.  This is roughly four to six American dollars, using rounded but whole numbers.

To capture the most returns, you first return for double refund all three tubes (at least one of which must be opened with dough missing, to prove you have lubed at least one spokaine and found the dough faulty).

This yields between eighteen and seven-hundred dollars.

You subtract your initial investment of $1.99 times three, then combine your net-profit with Couponing.  I suggest a Shaw’s-Brand-Raw-Dough Coupon, When and Only When Shaw’s throws its Triple Coupon Fest.

Finally, take $5.00 from your returns and invest it in three on-sale tubes of Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough, providing sufficient but delicious dough to keep six rugby players and an equal sum of spokaine-joists lube’d and happy, with exactly $142.19 leftover to buy one pound of DAKA Gummy Squid:  a nutritious member of the Slippery Fish Group (DAKA, not the squid).

I am always happy to share discoveries made within my artistic domain.

And thank you for not asking.

Getting Drunk For The Holidays

Dear All Of My Students,

I know that teachers are supposed to be role models without prior lives or criminal histories.  (Elementary school children think we never eat, poop or cry and older kids force themselves to believe we procreate through adoption.)

In fact, when we are actively teaching, most licensed professionals guard their licenses with their LIVES by revealing nothing of themselves. We proffer advice through metaphor. 

But to me, there is no advice more credible than that which is grounded in personal experience.

So here and now, I wish to advise my many college freshmen and sophomores plus one personal offspring at Salem State … to NOT engage in hedonism -- or drinking -- during winter break.  It's been my personal experience to return to campus each January looking like an internment victim, back from a 30-Day War.  Although these "returns" were pretty atypical: I was returning to multiple campuses, throughout several decades. 

I am like a coffee table book, Tuition Through The Ages, or Credits From Round The World.

By the time I’d collected, from various continents, sufficient credits for a degree, I was sufficiently “aged” to have spawned four kids. They ranged in ages from 13 to 3. It was roughly in this timeframe that I experienced my Golden Age.

One morning in early January, one of my college-peers was sipping coffee back at the Non-Traditional Student Lounge where the aged and infirmed were segregated.  She took one look at me and gasped, "My God.  You look worse than you did in September."

“What do you mean, Katie? I thought I looked fetching in autumn, loitering in the Book Store line.”

“Well you didn’t. Not then and certainly not now.  It’s all that ‘vacation time.’ Haven’t you noticed how bad we ALL look after Christmas? But especially in September. Spending an entire summer with offspring makes us wrinkle.  And you thought it was the sun.”

I raced to the nearest ladies’ room to examine my crow’s feet, newly deepened by the Spirit Of Christmas-Passed.  Katie was right.  I was the apocalypse.

There in front of Stall Number Three I decided I had had enough ‘offspring devotion.’ I determined that, come next Christmas, I would preserve my youth by doing things that I found fun. 

When the next Yule Season arrived, I did not take the children skating. I sent them to my mother’s with electric guitars and an amp.

If an offspring asked, “Can I sleep over Daniel’s house?” I only said yes if I could throw a party while he was gone.

Instead of wallpapering a child’s bedroom, I wrote graffiti on the sizing:  “For a good time, leave home now.”

I was an aspiring hedonist.  Why not?  By then I’d been attending college since 1976. Pretty much sober.  And except for those offspring-wrinkles I hid with bangs that covered my face, my appearance had not changed. (It was helpful that Army Boots and long hair were back in style.)  I wanted to avoid Christmas Break Wrinkles because I enjoyed being mistaken for Spawn of the 80s.  

This is called "identity crisis." Mine began the same semester I'd committed to hedonism.  I was taking notes in a philosophy lecture on morality and ethics, when a student leaned over and asked, "Hey, how wasted have you ever gotten on Jell-O Shots?"

Before I answered, another student cross-whispered that she had once been hospitalized from eating Jell-O Shots and I said, “Oh! Are they like hooch brownies?”

Both of them stared.

“You know.  Marijuana brownies.”

“How old are you?”

“I was born in the Eisenhower Administration.”

“He was a president, right?”

“Jesus, Angie, take a media course.  Eisenhower invented PHOTOGRAPHY.”

“Excuse me ladies.  What ARE Jell-O Shots?”

They exchanged glances.  The one with the pretty nose ring began speaking, very slowly.  “Do you know what a Jell-O   J I G G L E R   is?”

“I DO. I have a strawberry triceratops in my purse. Do you want one?”

They didn’t explain the rest.

When I got home I asked my 13-year old about Jell-O Shots. 

He looked like he’d just found me beneath bread mold.

“Mom,” he said, maintaining eye contact, lest I get distracted by a TV Maalox ad, “Jell-O shots are made – are you listening? – with ‘booze.’  You eat them at parties.  You know what those are, right? And you get D R U N K.  Drunk is when—“

“Shut up, Nicholas.  Do your homework.  Or turn on Def Zombie.”

“WHITE Zombie.”

“Shut up.”

I knew what drunk was.  And I intended to do it again, at a New Year’s Eve party I began organizing that day, for our dearest, oldest friends.  To revisit our youth and feel ‘energized!’

We even invited my mother to ‘chaperone’!   :D

Moments before the crowds poured in, regrets poured in, instead.  I was moved by the physical affliction, Acts of God and personal loss described.  One friend was hallucinating (she could produce a note from her neurologist).  Another’s living room had caught fire (he forgot where he kept his wood-burning stove).  Someone phoned in a Third-Marriage Proposal Engagement-Ring Stuck To An Arthritic Finger story.  It involved gangrene and an ambulance.

I was so upset I ate a plate of vodka dimetrodons.

We invited 40 people.  Three couples came.  But thanks to a bourbon triceratops, I saw three of everyone.

It was probably the dinosaurs.  No one looked familiar.  Buck “Harley” Richards had changed his first name to ‘Reverend’ and Jill, my best childhood friend, brought a boy I sent out to play.  She said he was her husband.  A newlywed couple no one knew came at 6:30 by mistake trying to find another party.  I passed them each a tyrannosaurus rex and wouldn’t let them leave.

That’s when Mrs. Reverend Richards, a lay paleontologist, got drunk and launched an Attack of Gin Stegosauri. She made them JUMP into her husband’s mouth. I tried to save him by stabbing at them with hors d'oeuvres skewers just as they reached his lips, but a tray of the Reverend’s Cocktail Franks and my mother’s Spinach Balls distracted me. I impaled each with a skewer and re-named them Picks In Dicks And Geneva’s Balls.

Mrs. Richards started laughing and slid to the floor, but Reverend Buck glanced at his watch, ruminating about church the next day.

Jill fed her husband’s arms into his snow suit and off everyone went, followed by the newlyweds, so blinded by anxiety, they struck and maimed a deer as their car bolted from our street.

We were alone by 7:02.

I surveyed the aftermath.  It looked pretty bad to me, but everything I tried to focus on moved. I suggested we split into teams to contain the mess.

In twelve seconds, I’d disposed of three damp beverage cups, Mom rinsed a plastic fork and my husband asked if bent napkins he found could be re-used.

It took an hour to wrap leftovers.

I was bored sober.

“Is anyone hungry?” I asked.  My husband brushed past me with a tray bearing nothing but a pterodactyl toe.

It seemed we were not speaking.

“Hey kids!” I chirped.  “Parcheesi??  Mother, Anagrams?”

My mother glanced protectively at a spinach ball cradled in her lap.  She turned away and pretended to read old scratch tickets.

The kids put on their pajamas.

I was thinking I should paint a red A on my chest for Ass-O-Holic when Nicholas threaded his arms through mine and hugged me.  “Mom thanks! What a party. My friends think YOU are cool! And they love your Mega-Deth tape.  We played ping-pong for a while, but then we switched to poker.  Oh, and we tried to raise Elvis’ spirit until someone said he’s not dead.  More like… cryo-vac’d somewhere. But everyone especially liked the food.”

“Really, Nick?” I beamed.  “What did they say, what did they EAT?”

“Everything!  Cheese curls, pretzels, orange soda, Fifth Avenue Bars.  It was awesome!”

“Did they try any of the hot foods upstairs?”

“There was food upstairs, too?!  Wow, Mom!”

I looked at my watch.  It was 8:15.

“Well, “ he said.  “I’m going back downstairs.”

“Oh honey, don’t worry about the mess. It’ll all pick up tomorrow.”

“What?  Mom, I just came up for ice. My girlfriend said her coke was warm,” then he went to the cooler and headed for the basement.

Girlfriend?

I followed him.

As we wound down the stairs I thought I smelled incense, then I detected a familiar murmur, which grew stronger and louder as we reached the family room door. A chill ran down my spine. The door – a thin veil separating me from doubtless, unspeakable crime -- was opened by my child just as casually as if he were opening my mail.

I was transfixed by the mayhem.  Milling throughout the turns of my house’s foundation was a human chain of what I guessed were likely thousands of 13-year-olds, bound in party bliss.  There was such a conspicuous lack of personal space, I suspected they were brain dead from breathing each other’s exhale.

The floor by the wood stove was occupied by a writhing circle of girls in the throes of some séance climax, wringing their hands and chanting, “Sevil Sivle”or Elvis Lives backward.

Sequestered around our ping-pong table was a nearly naked co-ed group playing strip poker. 

A Goth Gang in leather was head-banging to that holiday-favorite, Burn Me, Fuck Me, Death Sublime.

“Jonathan!  MOM!” I screamed. “COME QUICK!”

“Oh, would you look at this!” said my mother.

“Jesus,” my husband prayed.  Then he smiled. “Boy can we throw a party.”

My Mom grabbed a handful of Pez, then head-banged her way to the poker game and snagged an empty chair. “Dudes,” she shouted to Jonathan and me, “this game needs CHAPERONES,” then she leaned toward a girl wearing nothing but a coat and asked, “Does a Royal Flush beat Three Of A Kind?”

Mom lost the game and her body heat in forty minutes.

But we had gained something.  Something that had maddeningly escaped us, though we had it all along.

I clicked my red party stilettos together three times and gleaned the wisdom that, no matter how much we craved young, exciting identities, like, “Baby Booming Jiggler Shooting, Glue-Sniffing MORONS” – what we really were … was parents.

Awesome parents.  That threw cool parties.  And a gnarly gambling Grammy they called Black Jack Geneva.

We were the envy of the Eighth Grade.

Anyway, sweet ex-AMSA tots: please avoid collegiate holiday hedonism during your own winter break.  Save this experience for your third or fourth decade.  You’ll learn so much more, I promise.

The Lost Art of Dining, American-Style

Having embarked on the Good Ship Shopping-Go-Round where I revisit the same stores over and over in my Amnesiac Final Race to Christmas, I decided to change things up.  To get through the next Eight Days of Christmas, I fashioned for myself a jolly behavior-modification reward.  Or maybe delayed-gratification.  I’m not sure. 

But it involved FINISHING my shopping, then rewarding me by eating restaurant food with actual other people.  Their names are Susan and Terese. 

Just like me, neither are done shopping nor currently teach.

“Guys, let’s make a vow, “ I said via conference call.  “No matter what state of Loose End our Christmas shopping is in, tomorrow night at 6:00, let’s stop, drop and roll; and I don’t mean sushi or egg.  I want a bromated white-bread hot buttered roll smeared with gravy and meatloaf.  With gravy as a beverage.”

They were in.  

Susan even knew of this quaint place a few towns over that specialized in New England fare:  a ‘true grit’ kind of place with a name like Ye Olde Yankee Hearth-Stone Taverne Port O’Call that John Wayne himself was said to have patronized for their strapping shanks of pot roast  -- and popovers the size of a Buick.

When we sat down, each of us lurched toward the menus already swiping at drool, power-scanning for gritty fare.

What was our surprise to instead find delicate, smarmy foods.  They sounded like they needed pre-treating:  Sashini Morselettes, Seed O’ Sesame Fusion Cubes, Crème de Blanc A La Tete.  Stuff you know would arch its back and dart off the instant you sat it near ketchup.

 Clearly Americans need more restaurants that feature our country’s native specialties.

 So that night, our group of natives trollop’d through the countryside in search of our culinary roots, to find a restaurant that spoke to our purple mountain’s majesty, the amber waves of grain.

We found two such establishments the next town over.

Not a group to skimp during the holidays, we opted to patronize both and compare them, hopefully discerning for our nation the one true restaurant that best caters to Americana.

OUR DECISION

To be fair, we ordered identical menu items at each restaurant and after much deliberation, we discovered the cheeseburger meal at Burger King beat Ronald’s Happy Meal, two-to-one.

My friend Susan still points excitedly to where the flame-broiled after-burn left its special impression.

Noting the health-consciousness of contemporary consumers in our age-demographic, we ordered plastic cups of sliced onions because studies have found that they reduce serum cholesterol.

Plastic cups do not, however, contain enough of the calcium women need. Or fiber.  So we ordered super large milk shakes, then ate our BK bags (made from recyclable cellulose flakes that RACE to the colon like Lady-Lax).

Susan chose to eat the onions in her cup, and discovered they self-drape on a burger better than the minced onion spread from McDonald’s. They also burned especially well with that lasting flame-broiled impression.

But the best thing to do with BK onions is play our favorite American Travel Game, High Speed Ring Toss.  Terese was the high-scorer when she nailed the antenna of a ‘75 T-Bird doing 83 MPH.

BK french fries are a drier variety than McDonald’s and have a tendency to cool down faster.  As some of us hadn’t eaten since Sunday, this was an important french fry feature.

The accelerated cool-down rate probably defies some law of physics, but I think Burger King uses special fast-cooling potatoes, via root-vegetable genetics, as a promotional device.

If you ask for ketchup, Burger King will actually hand you the exact number you ask for.

McDonald’s gives you a fistful which is approximately nine pouches from the average employee hand and that is just plain too much ketchup.  Several packets drop to my car mats where they explode on sunny days.

The Burger King vanilla milk shake was more crystalline than dairy drinks at McD’s, which, on our Chewable Beverage Scale, rated a big 8.5!

An American Hamburger Drive-Thru Meal cannot be rated unless you consider the plastic toy inside the bag. 

As a team of ex-professional educators, we were pretty impressed with the BK Crown Activity Box “with inspiring, fun activities.”  Although Terese and Susan fought over the Kidz-Bop CD Collectibles.  (Terese wanted Number 4 and Susan refused to trade it for Terese’s Number 2.)

Speaking of number 2, the revival of the Teenage Mutant Action Figures in Ronald’s Happy Meal gave me cramps.

The last time I’d had to look at those weaponized ninjas, I was winding up my newborn’s pink puffy-cloud mobile, when, what to my unfocused eyes should appear, but Raphael,  Donatello and Two Mutant Deer, spinning ‘round to Braham’s Lullaby, causing the baby and me to scream.

Her brothers had fastened multiple mutant-figures to the mobile  -- each locked in a death grip to a pink cirrus or lavender cumulonimbus by miniature metallic nunchucks.

Not only was it violent and horrific, Amphibious-Green in no way blended with lavender or pink.

I won’t go into the decorative Mutant Stickers that wouldn’t peel off the sheet ... or the Michelangelo figure in his Turtle-Mobile wedged sideways inside his Shell Garage who couldn’t drive outta that sucker if he were set on fire with a childproof cigarette lighter.  We tried.

Finally, we found the caliber of car exhaust to be especially high quality at the BK drive-thru line.

The McDonald’s drive-thru line was so thick with blue oil and diesel, we couldn’t see if we were shouting our order into a speaker or an ornamental shrub.

Bored with American Cuisine, Terese, Susan and I are paying tribute to Italy on New Year’s Eve by comparing Papa Gino’s with Pizza Hut.

Buon appetito et Buon Natale!