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A couple of weekends ago I played a gig in Hampstead, North Carolina, located a bit to the north of Wilmington, North Carolina.  One time-honored tradition of any road trip is the obligatory stop at McDonald’s.

According to my budgeting software, the last time I had been to a McDonald’s (at least on my own dime) was March 2024, so this visit was my first to a McDonald’s location in slightly over a year.  That March 2024 visit was the inspiration for my post “McDonald’s: A Vision of Our Dystopian Future,” which I reblogged two weeks ago.  After that odd, filthy experience, I figured it would some time before I darkened the double arches again.

But there’s something about eating one of those pathetic little cheeseburgers late at night on the road that holds a certain allure for yours portly.  I actually really love the basic McDonald’s cheeseburger, even though the bun has the consistency of moist Styrofoam and the patty is thinner than stick bug.  That pickle—that single, succulent pickle brings the entire sandwich together.

So it was that I found myself fumbling with the McDonald’s app late that Saturday night, rocketing through the inky night of empty eastern North Carolina, placing my order for a large, two-cheeseburger combo and using a 30% off coupon.  I soon found myself in an unknown town in an unfamiliar part of rural North Carolina, pulling up to a McDonald’s my app insisted had already closed its dining room.  When I saw people coming and going freely from the dining room, I decided to go inside to see if I could avoid the heinously long drive-through line.

There’s something about McDonald’s after 9 PM on a weekend night.  The drive-through lanes are suddenly crammed, as it seems as though every denizen of the night wants high-sodium treats before, during, or after an evening of all-night partying.  Seeing that I could possibly leapfrog these suckers and enjoy my own high-sodium treat that much sooner, I sauntered into this location.

I soon realized my mistake.  McDonald’s no longer employees any cashiers—at least, that is how it seems—and everything is ordered in the app or via their huge kiosks.  A throng of teenagers, fresh from a concert band performance—they were all dressed in black and celebrating that they wouldn’t have to play a trombone or a flute or whatever for another couple of weeks—were waiting for their food.  Next to them, standing close to the pickup counter, was a long-haired, overweight guy in a red t-shirt and glasses.  The glasses were those kinds with an all-plastic, transparent frame.  The man sported a heavy frame, and looked like your standard-issue comic book nerd.

Naturally, overweight comic book nerds are my people, and, seeming to detect that I was a friendly, this quivering mass of hair and flesh began to talk to me.  He asked me if I remembered the old television show Tech TV, to which I replied that I had some passing familiarity.  He told me that I looked like a guy that would host that show, noting my slacks; my tucked-in, button-up shirt; my glasses; and even my slightly (it’s only slightly, I say!) receding hairline.  I laughed and we struck up a conversation.

A quick note:  my super power, as it were, is to attract the weirdos.  For many years, I have been something of the “King of the Weirdos,” in that, while I am occasionally eccentric myself, I am the least weird and/or most normal weirdo, so I become the default leader of any band of merry misfits.  For whatever reason, people who exist slightly outside of mainstream respectability—and even those who live way outside of it—are attracted to me like a pig to butter.  Dr. Girlfriend says it is because people can sense that I am kind and patient; my brothers say that it’s because these people recognize one of their own.  I suspect it’s a combination of those two, as well as the fact that I only very rarely turn someone away if they strike up a conversation with me.  That’s gotten me into some interesting situations before, but it typically just means that I’ve conversed with a wide range of people.

Quickly I found myself a held hostage in a conversation with this guy.  He began giving me a detailed history of computing.  While trying to give him my attention, I was also desperately trying to flag down an employee to try to fill my order.  Eventually, one overworked-looking young man came by, and I got his attention.  He went to lock up the doors to the outside, then came back to me.  I explained to him—with the nerd still blathering on—that I had ordered for the drive-through, but was hoping to get my meal inside.

“You have to change it in the app,” he said.  So, I did.  However, because the location’s dining room was no marked as “closed,” changing to in-store pickup cancelled and refunded the order.  I was a bit perturbed, but now found myself trapped in a conversation with no escape!

As I tried to figure out my next steps—try to re-order, or just get on the road without any food—I began to notice more interesting details about the stuffed individual before me.  Not only did he have long hair and a dirty beard, he also had colored acrylic nails—but not on every finger!  I was also becoming aware that anyone who would corner a stranger at a McDonald’s at 10 PM and go into obsessive detail about the computing technology on Second World War American battleships (seriously, he discussed that with me) is probably autistic.  There is a huge overlap between autism and transgenderism, for reasons I do not understand or know at all, but which intuitively make sense.  I was just waiting for him to start talking about his erotic Sonic the Hedgehog fan-fic and then I knew I’d be a goner.

During this exchange, I began employing my patented technique for escaping incessant talkers—backing slowly towards the exit while making noises about “needing to get on the road.”  An elderly woman who, it seemed, was the man’s mother saw that her son had me hostage tried feebly to get his attention—my trans-species friend now how had his bag of food—before relenting and walking out of the restaurant.  Finally, as he told me about the thin metal that is used as the touchscreen component for phones, and that a similar, albeit more primitive, form of that technology was used on battleships, I told him I needed to use the bathroom and get on the road, and slipped into the men’s room.  Fortunately, he did not follow.

When I emerged, the nerd and his mom were gone.  I resigned myself to a night without McDonald’s, and hopped into my car.  As I was climbing in and texting Dr. Girlfriend about the bizarre occurrence, the employee I spoke with earlier asked me if I had ever received my food.  I told him no, that the app had cancelled the order when I switched to dining room pickup, and that it was fine.  He said something akin to, “oh, hell, no, get back in here!”  I obliged, and in about five minutes, I had three cheeseburgers, a large fry, and a large Diet Coke—for free!  I thanked the young man profusely and got on the road.

That experience is a reminder of the good that still can emanate from those golden arches.  It was an ordeal of the mild sort, but I got a free bag of high-sodium goodies and a good story out of the deal.

Now, of course, I must wonder:  will there ever be a normal, plain, boring McDonald’s experience, one equivalent to ordering a plain hamburger with no toppings to give to my dog?

I’ll tell you next year.