To Pull Up, or Not To Pull Up?

First written for WTAD.COM WHITE PAGES 9/14/16

Recently,  Jeff and I got fast food VIA the drive-through lane. Not to throw any business under the bus, but the little girl on the logo has red hair, pig-tails and freckles. Her name may or may not start with “W”.  We had a fairly simple order, a triple-burger and a salad. There were three cars ahead of us and four behind us. The cashier returned my debit card, without a food bag, and said, “Please pull up. We’ll bring it out when it’s done.”

“How many minutes until it’s done?” I asked.

“We really don’t know.”

“You don’t know????”

“Nope, there’s no timer on it.”

“Then, how will you know when it’s done?”

“We just will. It just lies on the grill ‘til it’s done.”

I’m imagining the burgers getting very cooked, while sunbathing. Except their beach is the grill.

“Before we pull up, I need a small, vanilla, ice cream. We have a nervous dog in here.”

The cashier smiled with half of her mouth. She hadn’t grasped my goal yet: to consume as much time as possible, so that our triple sow-cow might be done, before we pulled up to wait. She snatched my debit card as she announced, “Fifty-four cents.”  This was possibly a new White house record: lowest debit card purchase EVER!

Still, there’s no burger-bag in sight. Begrudgingly, our car crept ahead to the dreaded waiting zone, as slow as when exiting the car wash and the dryer flashes, “35 seconds”, but your car is already 7/8 of the way through the process.

“I wouldn’t have pulled up,” Jeff said. He just won’t. I represent the other half of humans who’re compliant; we pull up. When our kids were little, they would chirp at times like this, “Daddy won’t pull up!” Would they be AATPU’s (Adults Adverse to Pulling Up), too?  We’re all motivated differently. Personally, I fear how they’ll treat my food, if I don’t pull up.

Then the fun began, because this is a single drive-through lane, with no wiggle room. There were at least five cars behind us. The possibility of maneuvering around me was zero. Picture this: we’re waiting, Lily White, the black Lab, is happily eating vanilla ice cream to kill time, and the cars who received their orders, can’t get around us. It’s a perfect storm! Jeff and I laughed, because, the restaurant and we had each gotten what we wanted: they got us to pull up, but it had the same effect as if we’d waited at the window. For once, Jeff and I were both glad that we’d pulled up!