THE GOLDEN ARCHWAY TO HAPPINESS

You always remember your first ( fast food experience). The way it looked when you first saw it, the way it tasted in your mouth, the way it felt right and warm in your hands and left you feeling wonderfully full. Even when it was bad, it was still pretty great.

I’m not one for brand loyalty, but there is something to be said for one special chain so synonymous with fast food that the very sight of its logo fills the person seeing it with nostalgia.

My parents are immigrants, and having grown up in Scarborough, a particularly suburban though diverse corner of the Greater Toronto Area, restaurants with reservations were a non-concept. So when we went out, it was always a special occasion, and it was always McDonald’s.

Not on a Friday or Saturday night, but on a Wednesday after school, the one day a week my dad had off from work. He and I would split the two- for- one apple pie deal and revel in our love for the McChicken. Even when I bite into one now, my mind still carries me back to those precious Wednesdays in the ’ 90s. I met my first crush in the PlayPlace all those years ago. When I was older, my friends and I would walk down the street to the McD’s on the corner in high school, skipping next period and opting for McFlurries instead. In university, it was the surprisingly perfect place to get work done: WiFi, fireplace, warm lighting and a damn good cup of coffee.

I still think about the chain’s pizza ( R. I. P.) as if it were a longlost friend. Just as the McDonald’s version of animal crackers will always stay with me, and the precious, precious Big Xtra.

As James Franco wrote in his own reflective essay on McDonald’s, “All I know is that when I needed McDonald’s, McDonald’s was there for me. When no one else was.” Its golden arches are the lights that guides some of us home; after all, you can find it on every other block.

Above all else, what McDonald’s offers is comfort. When you’re scrounging to make ends meet, it’s there. When you need your first job, it’s there. When you’re grabbing coffee with an old friend, it’s there.

There is only one Big Mac; one McNugget. Only one golden arch (okay, two). It is not some fast food chain or a last resort. McDonald’s is its own food group.