Once, on a trip to Texas, my little brother and I were riding in the back of my family’s blue and white Ford Bronco. After we were on the road for a couple of hours, my little brother and I declared that it was time for lunch. Now, my dad likes to drive uninterrupted from home to destination and back; to him, bathroom breaks and meals are a nuisance. However, after a few minutes of the combined hunger howling of my brother and I, he relented.
He pulled into a Burger King and rolled up to the drive-thru, unwilling to give up the extra minutes that might have been lost moving the whole family out of and back into the car. As he rolled his window down to order, the inside of the car was filled with our shouting.
”I want a kid’s meal with a Coke!”
”I want two hamburgers and a Mr. Pibb and fries!”
”Can I get a crown?”
”I want a crown, too!”
My dad jumped and ducked as if he were being pelted with rocks. After a few attempts to make us shut-up by waving his arms at us, he declared “FOUR WHOPPERS! Just give me four Whoppers and four Cokes!”
My brother and I sat in shocked silence. Whoppers? We never said anything about Whoppers. What was he thinking? “Daaaad, Whoppers have mayonnaise! I can’t eat a Whopper!”
“Son, just wipe it off!”
Wipe it off? Was the man insane? I’d sooner eat dog bowels than allow anything that had ever touched mayonnaise to pass between my lips! You can never remove mayonnaise once it has made contact. It’s like food cancer. It spreads from bun to meat with no hope of a cure. Wipe it off? Not even if I used turpentine would I be able to remove the danger. And then there was the lettuce, tomatoes, and onions to worry about.
My brother was much younger than me and quickly went on defense by crying. He knew that he didn’t want to eat a Whopper and instinct told him the best option was to turn on the waterworks. He was a pro the whole way: no bullshit, no build-up, no pleading. This was an emergency situation that didn’t allow for such luxuries. He just cried…loudly.
“What! Why is he crying?” my dad howled.
“I don’t want a Whopper, Mommy! Please get me a kid’s meal!”
It was a beautiful play with flawless execution. Divide and conquer; the boy was an ace. It was a brilliant move and I hated him for it.
I was screwed! I was 10 at the time, way past the point where crying would work, but I damn sure wasn’t eating a Whopper. I would have to try revolt. I couldn’t cry my way out, but I wasn’t giving up without a fight.
When my Dad got the bag, he passed my Whopper back to me. I took it, unwrapped it a little, and my stomach flipped from the smell. The scent of mayo and lettuce burned my 10-year-old nostrils like acid. I passed the burger back to the front. “It’s got mayonnaise. I don’t want it.”
My dad turned around in his seat and said, “You are going to eat this hamburger!”
At this point, I made a crucial tactical error. If I had played dead, I might have been fine. Maybe they would have felt bad that I had died of hunger and would get me a kid’s meal out of pity. Then I could miraculously come back to life and they would be so happy that they would let me eat it and throw the Whopper away. Maybe, just maybe, I could have tried a little wet-cheek. In any event, hindsight makes it painfully clear that my response was the wrong one: I challenged him.
I said, “No, I’m not!”
Four hours later, I was still dramatically choking, gagging, and sniffling with each mayonnaise-flavored, pea-sized bite of a very ugly, half-eaten, cold Whopper. My brother had long since finished eating his kid’s meal and was asleep, still wearing his crown.
