I'm on my way to work, and I'm not late! Yea! I do have to stop at the babysitter's to drop off the kids my way to work. My purple VW bug with the multi colored peace signs and yellow smiley faces randomly painted on it is headed east bound in four-lane, pre-rush hour traffic.

It's only 7:05 am, but it's August and we are in the 9th day of a record hot spell in the Midwest. It's already 90 degrees. I can't have the windows rolled down very far or it will mess up my hair. For those of you familiar with my woes, you already know that my VW doesn't have a heater, did you guess that it also doesn't have air conditioning?

Beside myself in my VW, I have my two very unhappy toddlers, strapped in their car seats, wet with sweat and cranky as "HE double toothpicks!" I'm doing anything and everything that I can to distract them enough so they won't start bawling. We are singing commercial jingles at the top of our lungs and pounding a rhythm out on anything that we can reach, steering wheel, dash, doors, seats……. each other.

If all this racket and activity isn't enough, I'm also turning around to look at my kids and making every kind of goofy face that I can. You can imagine the looks that we are getting as cars zoom by!

High/low, soft/loud, over and over we sing....

"Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce
Special orders don't upset us
All we ask is that you let us
Have it your way!"

Suddenly "it" happens! My three-year-old spots the "golden arches" and she begins to beg "Mommy, Happy Meal! Happy Meal!" To even see the arches my kids are looking at, have to bend over and peer up out of the windshield.

Personally, I think that the marketing strategy of that particular restaurant chain is to place those golden arches up high enough so that the little ones in their reclining car seats are the first ones to see the arches. That way at a very early age they are prompted to start begging for their parents to stop and eat.

I am in a generous mood and since I have a few minutes to spare, so I decide that I will drive through and buy the kids breakfast. I pull up to the window and order two breakfast sandwiches. My three-year-old asks for "Just ketchup!" The teenager in the window says "We don't put ketchup on egg biscuits". I ask "Couldn't you please make an exception, just this once?" He replies that he would have to "ask the shift manager".

Five minutes later we are still sitting at the window, having just explained to the fourth person in a blue uniform with a "we're here to please you" button pinned on his shirt, that my three-year-old is going through a "phase" and she won't eat anything unless it has ketchup on it. All four involved restaurant employees remain huddled together trying to figure out how to process my unique "ketchup on an egg biscuit order" through the POS machine. We are waiting in the VW smelling sausage and bacon frying, getting hungrier and hotter....

My youngest toddler, the two-year-old is bored and he starts singing (shouting) again.....
"Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce
Special orders don't upset us
All we ask is that you let us Have it your way!"

There is a moment of silence as the restaurant employees stare at my son while he sings their competitors commercial jingle; they don't look very pleased, as if they think he's singing it on purpose!

By now I've become angry, so I decide to just leave (as quietly as possible without drawing any more unwanted attention to us). Keeping my right foot on the brake, with my left foot I push in the clutch on my VW and manually change the transmission into first gear, ready to drive off. I silently vow that it will snow in Africa before I visit that particular golden arch again!

After I feel the tranny slide into gear, I ease out the clutch and push down the gas pedal just a little bit. My VW backfires loudly and dies in a puff of smoke. The four people at the window run toward the back of the restaurant. My first thought is that 'they think I have a gun!'

I am shocked and embarrassed to tears because my car has died amidst so much noise and smoke. I don't know why it did such a thing, it's never happened before! Looking down at my dials and gauges I see that my gas gauge says, "empty". Humiliated, I put my VW in neutral, get out and start pushing it out of the drive through lane.

As I pass the entrance to the restaurant, the door opens and the breakfast cook walks out and hands me a paper bag. He smiles at us and says; "Here's your order, just the way you want it. There's no charge; it's on us today. I'm sorry we couldn't figure out how to place your order on the cash register. Please hurry back and see us!"

I feel relieved to find out that "intelligent life" does exist below the golden arches! Seeing the bag of food my kids start yelling "Yea! Yeah! Yeah!" "Happy Meal!" "Happy Meal!"