Cheesburger, please
Jennifer Flaten

It was on our weekly jaunt to the mega mart that I made a fatal mistake. Now, the weekly visit is a huge improvement from the thrice-weekly visits of yore. At one point, we had three kids in diapers-you do the math.

We went to the store so often I began to view the clerks as family.

While the diaper days are long behind us, I am positive the store would go out of business if we stopped shopping there; we are constantly running low on something. Mainly, because the people using the next to the last drop of milk, dish soap, toilet paper fail to inform purchasing (me) that we are running out of said item.

Anyway, there I was zipping down the aisle with kids in tow, when I spied a sale in the foundations department. In case you didn't know foundations is a quaint word for mumble-garments.

Never one to pass up the word sale, I decided to look. I park the cart and using my best mom voice, I tell the kids to stay put.

Yes, in hindsight I admit I was delusional. Why did I think the kids would listen? Well, they did listen, if what they thought I said was "please run amok in the department."

For a few brief moments, I was "that woman," the one with the kids rampaging around the store. Okay, you got me I am always "that woman," my kids are always rampaging and I am always corralling them-hence the multiple trips to the mega mart.

After I explain to them that it is never appropriate to build a fort under the nightgown rack, I insist they stay by my side.

Really, I should have let them run wild. They proceed to offer opinions, such as get the polka-dotted one on my purchases.

Although that beats them grabbing items off the rack waving them about and yelling "is this your size?" and when I say no its not they proceed to shout "well, what's your size?" which they did loudly and repeatedly.

I try ignoring them, but the loud giggles and snorts as I select various items is enough to drive me out of the department.

After that, I decide I need a cheeseburger-or a Taser, but a cheeseburger is probably a safer and more socially acceptable option.

Of course, according the Center for Science in the Public Interest, whose interest, certainly not mine, I am simply acquiescing to my children, who themselves are helpless against the corporate marketing machine that is McDonalds.

The Center has its undies in a bunch over the toys that McDonalds and every other fast food place in the free world offers with their kids meals.

According to the Center, they think the toys coerce little kids into wanting fast food.

Well, duh!

Yes, the children like the little plastic toys in the happy meal, so much so, that I am considering adding a toy to my meals-look kids its meatloaf man-but still, what the Center for Science fails to understand is I like cheeseburgers and fries too.

What momma wants momma always gets.

I am well aware of the unhealthy nature of the meals. That is why, no matter how much the kids wish every meal consisted of nuggets, of some sort, I offer homemade non-nugget items at about 95% of the meals we eat.

Still, there are times, when a lunch in a little cardboard box, complete with a little toy is just the right thing to make a bad day better.