Out of the Mouths of Babes

Ben asked me a great question the other day;

“Happy Meals don’t really make you happy, do they Dad?”

“No mate, they don’t”, I replied.
“So why do the evil McD….. corporation call them that?”, Ben enquired (his own words).
“Well son, they advertise them in this way so that kids nag their parents to buy the meals for them.”
“But why would they do that Dad?”, Ben questioned.
“Because they want to make lots of money, and because their food tastes like plastic that is they only way they can sell it.”, I replied.
“That’s not right, is it Dad?”
“No, it’s not right to exploit kids in that way”, I answered.
“So Dad, why is my friend bringing me a Happy Meal for lunch today?”
“Well mate, that is because some people don’t understand the way things work like we do”.
“OK, thanks Dad”, replied Ben and that was the end of his line of questioning. He is such a clever little mite.

I do mention the Evil McD….. corporation occasionally, but I didn’t think he understood why. Maybe, I should have taken my own advice from my “Being Me” post. By the way, McD….’s food are banned in my house due to an altercation I had about a two years ago whereby one of the workers short-changed me by $20 at the drive-through and wouldn’t give me a refund despite the evidence I had. After I marched into the restaurant and made a scene in front of the store manager, I finally got my money back which took me about 20 minutes of ranting. I certainly was not going to leave until I got it and received extremely poor customer service.

Basically I was told that I was a liar and that the till did indeed balanced, yet I had 3 witnesses and they had one. To make matters worse, a few hours later I received a phone call from the store owner, who tried to make lame excuses about procedures and policies, and I told her in no uncertain terms that I would never be going back to eat at the Evil corporation. And that was that. It is also banned because the main line of products lack nutritional value and are high in fat content. The movie “Supersize Me” also opened my eyes to the health implications, even though it was taken to the extreme, but demonstrates the obesity epidemic that is sweeping western nations.

So if Kim and I do splurge on a takeaway, which is about once every 3 weeks, we support the local kebab shop. In this way we know that the money goes straight back into the local community as it is locally owned. Another fine example of acting locally to benefit the community.