McGross

This morning, running late to work, I realized I was particularly hungry. I stopped at McDonald's with the intention to get an Egg McMuffin, which I haven't had for a long time. I ordered and picked up my food without looking at it as the cashier's warning that the hashbrown was wicked hot was enough to convince me I had the right meal. I ate the hashbrown first because I like them scalding, like some sort of giant tater tot cooked at 500 degrees. If you leave them around for even a moment, they start to taste more like grease and less like a tater tot as far as I'm concerned. Which, not so coincidentally, is how I feel about tater tots themselves. Leave 'em sitting around and they taste less like crispy potato goodness, and more like cold grease. That applies double for tater tots with a hot cheese injection juicy lucy style.

After the hashbrown, I reached in for my McMuffin and, instead, found myself eye to eye with a McGriddle. It smelled strangely sweet and sort of like cheap maple syrup and was obviously pretty much a McMuffin, but with strange pancakes bracketing it instead of a muffin. I tried to remember if I'd just given them the wrong meal number, or if I was the victim of an attempt to unload some of the backlog. I had my doubts, but I took a bite. It was like eating maple candied breakfast. UGH! Revolting. In a moment that might be familiar to some of you, but was new to me, I was forced to consider whether it was better to spit or swallow. Get your minds out of the gutter. I was talking about when Kyle had uni.

I don't mind my food touching, and I've been known to let my breakfast eats indulge in a bit of of orgiastic mixing, but I generally keep my eggs and sausage separate from my pancakes and syrup. Apparently, Malcolm Gladwell's "thin slicing" was at work, and I had innately realized that syrup doesn't belong near the rest of your breakfast food. I drank my entire large orange juice, and still couldn't get the candied maple taste out of my mouth. It took a large refill of Caribou dark roast to eliminate the wrongness that permeated my mouth.

So much wrongness in such a small package. I don't think I'll ever be eating a McGriddle again.