“As a kid, I saw nothing odd about the relationship between my mother and McDonalds. The McDonalds our family knew was a force for good: Traveler’s helpmeet, employer of scrofulous teens, international promoter of clean toilets, and valiant opponent of illegitimate royalist upstart Burger King. On road trips, we would rather be found dead of starvation in our Chrysler Voyager than eat at Burger King. As we passed one, somebody in our family might talk about ‘a friend of a friend’ who ate a Whopper and died. Until I was at least a teenager, I possessed the unexamined belief that Burger King was evil. Not a worse burger-purveyor; evil. Evil like East Germans in Cold War movies.” —Julia Langbein on her Finnish mother’s curiously loyal career as an interpreter at Hamburger U. [Gilt Taste]
