Chernobyl

I’m standing in line at a McDonald’s, it’s close to eight on a rainy Tuesday night in Autumn. There’s this air-conditioner maintenance thing I’m supposed to manage at the office tonight, hence my punching in at the Bernie Goetz shift. And I have a sore throat.

There’s a family of eight before me, about to get serviced by the clerk. Odin the Allfather is scolding the hyperactive Loki and Thor, both about age seven to eight. The elder tells his sibling of this four-armed witch, wearing for an unspecified reason, a T-shirt with Souvenir from Chernobyl written on it. For the oddest of reasons the kid knows Chernobyl but can’t for the life of him get the pronunciation right on “McTasty”.

He should be talking of Fukushima instead. He should be having the Quarter Pound.

The twentieth century continues to haunt us like a dire wraith but it kinda doesn’t change a thing tonight. I haven’t even started yet and I so wanna go home and sleep tight under the comforter with Cybill by my side.