McDonalds: I'm Hatin' It.

I don't have a lot of childhood memories of McDonalds. I always thought it was because, with four kids, my parents didn't have a lot of money to spend on fast food. Now I know that it was probably more likely that my parents knew what torture lay in store for them if they took a small child to this evil den of iniquity.

My theory is that they spray a fine mist of a pro-psychotic aerosol drug through the ventilation system. That has to be it, because we hadn't even partaken of the factory-fresh goodness that is their food before Robbie was doing a full on impression of Charles Manson.

Let me back up. Last night we made the profound mistake of keeping Robbie up late by taking him my friend Jon's house for a Lost party. He was pretty good at the party but by the time we got home and got him in bed it was almost 11 pm. Misake number one.

Today around lunchtime I took Robbie with me to pick up some vinyl I had cut for his new room. The lady that makes the vinyl for me also runs a day care in her home and has a bazillion toys and children that Robbie immediately locked onto. In order to get him out of her house without him disolving into tears and fits, I whispered in his ear that I'd take him to McDonalds for a chocolate milk. Mistake number two.

He immediately perked up and said "McDonalds?" with an eloquence of diction that should have put me on guard. He's only been inside McDonalds one time, when he was 13 months old. Being able to repeat it back so clearly should have warned me that someone (Grummy?!) must have introduced him more recently. I was too busy being proud of myself for distracting him. Mistake number three.

My faulty thinking was that I could just swing through the drive up window for his milk and get us on our way home. When we got in line at the drive through he started lunging toward the left side of the car (as much as you can lunge in a car seat anyway) and moaning "That way!" while pointing at the Play Place. "Ok" I thought, I'll take him inside and he can play for a few minutes (you can laugh now) which was my biggest mistake of all.

I'll make this story shorter by just saying this: there was laughter, there was tears, there was a show stopping scene of a full on tantrum that made me wonder when someone would call the police to report me for kidnapping. Surely no child would react so violently to being picked up by their own mother, right? There was falling on the floor, there was kicking...and then there was the head butt he dealt me that I'm fairly sure is going to become a black eye.

That was two hours ago. To this minute he's upstairs in his bed moaning "more Donald's" while fighting against sleep.

McDonalds? Not again in this century, pal.