the sweetest tongue

sad world

Friday, July 2nd, 2004 | rant

While working yesterday in the restaurant in Plaza Carolina (Now a Simon Mall - another sign of the growing corporate powers that be), a mother pushes her son, who’s around maybe 3 or 4 years of age, to our counter. As if he could recognize the fact that fried rice and pepper steak do not relate to the wonderful Golden Arches (yet), he keeps shouting McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s,, pleading like any child would for what he feels is a real dinner. The mother ignores him (must be habit), and proceeds to order her own dinner of spare ribs and fried rice, and asks for an extra plate and a spoon. I guess we know what the McDonald’s child will be eating for his dinner.

As the kid rolls on by in front of me, I give him a look. Not a look of anger, but a comforting glance that said We can be just as fun as McDonald’s, you know?

He kept quiet after that, either by my stare, or the fact that he just saw a Chinese person look him straight in the eye. I tend to get a lot of reactions like that from kids here, a silence as if I was the bogeyman their parents had warned them about. Asians are the hidden minority for kids growing up, almost invisible in the media and kept behind thee counters of restaurants and laundromats.

I find it sad that a kid so young, who isn’t old enough to make full sentences on his own, has already learned to ask for the only recognizable food he knows, McDonald’s. Ask any kid his age what their preferred food is, and a majority of them will say McDonald’s, in a cute way that the corporation has used in their ads. I find it annoying, personally. I’ll admit, I used to be one of those kids, eating McDonald’s, KFC (back when they were still Kentucky Fried Chicken), Pizza Hut, and Burger King whenever I could, and it was always a treat. One infamous story was of me surviving on just McDonald’s McNuggets and milk for a whole road trip from New York to Knoxville when I was 3 or 4. Come to think of it, I was a hefty kid growing up.

But I say NO to the fast-food giants whenever I can, opting for lesser known fare, less corporate, less commercialized, and less synthetic foods when I can. Sometimes, I would rather STARVE than eat another greasy burger made by a low-paid worker whose only job is to turn the patties every 3 minutes and add ketchup, mustard or mayo. Food isn’t worth enjoying if you know it hasn’t been slaved over by a person who actually cared about how the food came out. Millions of kids in America and the world are being deprived of REAL food, and thousands of cultures are losing their heirs because kids are preferring burgers and fries to rice and the food their “uncool” parents grew up with.