Fast food revelation, far from home

Waiting for normal
Winnipeg, MB
July 2022
This photo originally shared on Instagram

In the middle of a long journey involving planes, trains, and an automobile, my wife and I happen across a McDonald’s and stop in before we get back on the soon-to-be-darkened highway.

COVID being what it is, the place is mostly empty. So while we wait for our order to be filled, I slowly walk around and appreciate the spectacle of late-evening sunshine splayed out across early-21st-century fast food interior design.

I get it: I’m an idiot. It’s a freaking fast food restaurant jammed between the river, a rail yard, and a city bus garage. A freight train rattles slowly past the back of the parking lot and casts shadows over the cracked pavement. There should be no reason why this place is remotely worth remembering.

Yet it is.

Call me weird, but I don’t want to forget places and moments like this. For some strange reason, they matter.

The place may look unassuming, but I’m experiencing it with a woman who nods approvingly when I say I want to get artsy under the golden arches. Small moments matter to her, and the synapses in my brain tell me on this summer evening in a prairie town that I never want to forget what it feels like to be here, with her.

So if you’re still reading this, you’re getting a bit of modern plastic resto still-life. I, on the other hand, am left with an indelible memory of a trip I can’t imagine having taken with anyone else.

We should all be so lucky to find that one person who makes us feel that way. I’m lucky I did. I’m lucky I’m still here to appreciate it. And her.

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