The McDonald’s Girl Story

The McDonald’s Girl Story: Joy

I never liked kids, even when I was a kid. Children, in my eyes, were not yet ripe. Especially the young ones. Infants and toddlers weren’t “people”. They were not yet fully formed. They were clueless and pointless sub-adults that stuffed random shit in their mouth and leaked from orifices. They couldn’t talk well. They tended to fall over. They drooled and smelled funky. Not interested.

One day, when I was young enough that I was nowhere near adult, I saw a child. The child was at McDonalds. The child was beaming. She changed my way of thinking.

I glimpsed her as the crowd briefly parted. She was tiny, lost amid the legs of adults bustling to and fro. Orders were being taken, money was changing hands, cash registers were beeping, customers shifted back and forth with their purchases. The whole thing formed a maelstrom of people; a tide of activity… all of it happening on the alternate dimension where the adults were paying attention. In the middle of it all, she stood still and simply beamed with joy. Alone in the crowd.

Someone had given her, a tiny little girl of about toddler age, a grand treasure. A fully filled soda cup; far too large for her diminutive size. She clutched it and watched it with wide eyes as if there had never been any object as wonderful and glorious as the amazing thing that she held in her hands.

You know why she thought it was the most amazing thing she’d ever held in her hands? Because it was.

I got it. What a weighty moment. For whatever reason, I’d never before understood the beatific wonderment of youth. This child, who was clutching a buck’s worth of sugar water, had a direct line to the joy of the universe. It was amazing; in the true sense of the word. I stood there astounded and speechless at the complete, naïve, guileless, joy of a happy child’s smile.

It was then that I started to understand. This is why adults raised children. This is why they tolerated crayons on the walls and dirty diapers and Barney videos… this was a real, unfiltered, direct link to heaven.

She was so happy. And I was too. I was delighted to have noticed such a moment. I saw and truly understood… joy. What I’d formerly thought of as joy was a mere shadow of this more perfect version. I’d already been polluted by the world. I’d had a soda before and knew I’d have them again. They didn’t impress me. I was cynical. I’d skipped homework, lied about cleaning my room, farted in public, and in a thousand ways diverged from the perfect joy of a child. We are all sinners. We are all imperfect. We have had pure joy but it is forgotten and lost. Now we have a less complete if more sophisticated emotion. It was something I didn’t understand until that moment. In that child’s smile I beheld pure joy.

The McDonald’s Girl Story: Loss

We all know what happened next, for we are world weary and time tested. The huge soda cup slipped through the girl’s hands.

If I could do anything in life, if I had the power to change time, to alter the course of events, to change fate… I would go back to that exact moment and catch that cup. There would be no more noble action, nothing more heroic, no purpose so completely good as to have stopped that loss from happening.

But of course, it happened.

It was crushing to witness that look of loss. Still awash in the cathartic realization that no joy is so complete as the joy of a child, I was shocked to see her total unreserved, complete, desolation. None of us can ever feel loss as did that child at that moment. We lack the naïve, innocence of a child’s joy and our reticence is armor against the tragedy of loss. Anything that complete and all-encompassing places too much of the world’s weight on the worn and used shoulders of an adult.

She had none of that. She’d been holding the greatest thing ever to exist in the universe… because to her it was… and then she had nothing but it’s absence.

The cup crashed into the ground sending ice and soda everywhere. Immediately, she bore the loss; its full totality. I’d been basking in the little girl’s complete joy and I saw it transform before my eyes to utter loss. None of us are capable of that level of sorrow that fast. We walk around with half our mind occupied by everything. You may say you are “in the moment” but you are most certainly not. Some part of you is thinking about taxes, or getting laid, or finding a place to take a dump, or the color purple, or that stupid song that keeps playing in your ear. You and I, and everyone else on earth, have too many experiences and thoughts to have the purity of joy that the little girl had. Subsequently we cannot experience loss like she did.

It was heartbreaking.

The McDonald’s Girl Story: Love

Of course, the girl burst into tears. I was too shocked by what I’d witnessed or I might’ve done the same.

Then came the final miracle of that day. Everyone, and I mean everyone, immediately dropped whatever they were doing. Orders ceased, the jostling crowd froze, a mother and a father swooped in from above and gave comfort. Strangers stood aside, interrupting plans which seemed important five minutes ago but were irrelevant now. Everyone made calming reassuring motions. The noise of activity vanished and was replaced by hushing sweet sounds.

Someone snatched the cup. The child was hugged. Lifted from the floor, scene of such devastation, and held tight. A mop appeared, a broom, the area was tidied. Everyone, and I mean everyone, wanted that little girl to be happy. For that brief period of time, absolutely nothing else in the world mattered to anyone there but that the child be right with the world again.

A child sized cup appeared. It was held tightly by a father. A straw proffered. The girl took a sip and we all stood watching as if the most important thing ever was taking place…. because it was. Her tears faded and she smiled again.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, breathed a sigh of relief.

It wasn’t the same smile. She was a more experienced child now. Aware that the glorious cup could vanish in an instant, she was just a bit guarded. Never to be so naïve again. That is the way of it. We grow. We harden. We must.

Gradually everyone turned back their own business. Some, particularly the older ones, boldly took the initiative to give a little coo or pat on the head to the little girl, who responded pleasantly. Then we all slid back into the isolation which is life.

I got a glimpse behind the veil of the world for that brief moment. Fortunately for me, I was receptive to what the universe was saying. Why that day? I’ve no idea. Why I wasn’t distracted with other thoughts, or unfeeling, or dismissive of the child… I’ll never know. Can you imagine the tragedy if I’d missed it? I’m glad I saw what I did.

I also felt a generalized warmth for my fellow man. Everyone there knew that children are important and why. They knew. Perhaps, I’d been the last on earth to figure it out? Sometimes I wonder about that. Everyone there put her as top priority. It was right and proper, they should. There wasn’t the slightest hesitation. There wasn’t a single person in that whole crowd who lacked empathy. That little girl, now held tight by a mother and father, was orbited by 50 strangers who universally wished her well. She was surrounded by love. How fortunate we are to be like that. How lucky we are to have her to remind us of it.