Once-Upon-a-Time McDonald's

Setting creates a mood.

She sat in the new McDonald's on Main and actually typed that sentence in order to better think about it.

Setting is mega-important to the reader and, ipso facto, to the writer. Chapter One: Time of day, what the sky looks like, is the air hot or cold, the ground wet or dry? Choose your words carefully and blah, blah blah.

Setting creates . . .

She sipped from her Diet Coke and stared at the opposite wall, which was emblazoned with a monster-sized glossy pic of an apple. She blinked and looked around, as though wakened from a dream, at the sand-colored walls, the spindly black stools, the elegant brown cloth window shades.

And she thought, “What in the pluperfect hell has happened to our McDonald's?”

(“Pluperfect” is a lush, gorgeous word. She typed that, too.)

This McDonald's, she thought, is where we used to hang out. Three kids and all their friends and a single mom who paid for Happy Meals with change out of a tip jar. The walls were red and yellow, then! Ronald himself grinned maniacally from a picture over the counter and nobody, nobody counted the freaking calories in the chicken mcnuggets. Those Happy Meals were absolutely grease-soaked. The air reeked of fryer oil, the floor was sticky as carnival taffy, and there were no window shades. The sky out that window was always shiny, hard blue as ceramic, and the people in here were happy, even if one of the kids dumped their pop-not-milk, because . . .

The walls weren’t brown.

And those cheap red plastic booths were just perfect.

Setting creates a mood.

Of course, the proper setting for a writer is a quiet area with beigey-poop tones and maybe apples. And quiet. The sunshine should stay just the other side of that window shade.

Chapter One . . .

But she missed the glaring colors and the fly-strip floor. McDonald's felt all wrong without Ronald, even though he had always creeped her out just a little. The calories posted above the counter and fruit pictures - what the hell were they going for, Starbucks meets Planet Fitness? And why is nobody smiling?

Because, well, McDonald's is no longer our happy place.

Incorporating wifi and blended coffee drinks was at a cost of something far less tangible.

The writer closed her laptop and primly disposed of her fruit (what the hell?) cup before approaching the counter again.  She ordered a nasty, sloppy Big Mac and a Happy Meal toy - troll! Purple hair! And she left McDonald's determined to keep her future visits on a drive-through basis only.

Setting is imperative, she thought, but not necessarily beige.

~*~*~ 

Love Lucy Crowe's Nest?  Sign up for the new blog subscription and get posts sent to your inbox twice a month.  Submit the form in the right sidebar or enroll HERE.

~*~*~

It's 2017! Time for Now

On the evening of December 31^st, she tucked 2016 beneath her arm and gingerly traversed the basement stairs, dodging a pair of roller blades and a saggy salt bag that had not yet made its way to the softener. A little short of breath already – 2016 was heavy – and hampered by the brush of cobwebs across her face, she lugged the Years Gone By box from the shelf and straightened the crick in her back before opening the lid.

                A smell like pumpkin innards – Halloween – rushed out at her and the pop of July firecrackers made her sit back on her heels. Frogs leaped amidst poinsettia leaves and cicadas croaked in time with the 9^th inning roar at Wrigley Field. Moldy tennis shoes reclined alongside graduation gowns, flip-flops slapped in time with the snow shovel scraping the sidewalk.

 

                Darker things, perhaps, residing at the bottom of the box. House fires and hospital stays, the funeral stink of blood lilies.

                She tossed 2016 in and quickly closed the lid.

                Upstairs again, black kitty on her shoulder with his whiskers twitching inquisitively, she contemplated the New Year box. She had stenciled 2017 in a color bright as sunshine on the lid, but now, faced with the blank lines in her notepad, she thought yellow to be a foolishly optimistic choice.

                So many demons to conquer, so little time. 

 

She picked up her pen.

 

                #1. Lose weight! Never mind that she had lost twenty pounds three years earlier and had kept the weight off. She could always lose more.

                #2 Overtime hours, lots and lots. (Because new car and stupid internet and dear God, everything else that cost too too too much)

                #3 Exercise. Well of course, duh.

                The list was much the same as 2016’s had been, and yet it had nothing to do with what she had found in the Years Gone By box. Losing weight, in fact, looked almost trivial compared with frog song.

                Kitty purred and nudged, and finally bit, just enough to get her attention.

                “Stop,” she admonished, and underlined 2017 on the box.

                So many demons, so little time.

                What if . . .

                Kitty yowled. Now. Pet me now. And, abstractedly, she rubbed his ears.

                Now.

Wait! What if there is ONLY now? What if the one demon - the only demon - is time itself? Time, always hurtling her forward, always making her cry, always passing before she could grasp a hand or kiss a tear. Time, making her older, adulting her children, bending her parents. What if there is no time? What if there is only now?

Now the light is slanting in through the bevels in the west window, making a pattern like purple raindrops on the linoleum. Now the kitchen still smells a little like Christmas gingerbread and Regina Spektor is singing on the iPod, an absurd song that lifts the soul and breaks the heart all at once.

Now the cat is feeling horribly neglected.

She picked him up and kicked the New Year box to the bottom of the stairs.

                Hello 2017!