hot fat

When i left work the other day, it was 113º  and 3% humidity outside.

I have to walk across a McDonalds parking lot, whose oil effluent (smell and material) is hosed down every morning and evening. I always have to navigate the frantic drivers heading towards the drive-up and their hamburger blinders (must get burger, must get burger) but on this particular day, not only was the line for the drive-up wrapped around the building but was forming in other directions, too. Cars angled themselves from the east and south street entrance. A car coming from the west inched forward. They were all converging, converging.

The loud hum of car air conditioner fans temporarily drowned out the sounds of street traffic and my eyes sizzled and choked on a mixture of dryness, dust, car fumes, and ambient cooking oil smell. The parking lot was full. I didn't want to be too conspicuous by staring into the vehicles of the waiting mass—assuming their universal fear of the world outside of a set of doors—but i wanted to try to catch some similarities that would all drive them to this place all at once at 5:25pm.

What was it about the searing dry heat and the comparable and even more unpleasant, searing and stuffy car that lured them to unknown quantities of oil, saturated fat, large servings and non-ice cream ice cream? With gas at over $4 a gallon and the possibility that they could be stuck in the drive thru chute for almost 10 minutes, what could be so enticing as to bring them there? In a city full of eating options including large overly-cooled grocery stores with ready-made dishes, WHY would you choose to remain in your vehicle and watch the gauge on your fuel tank dip lower and lower?

Sometimes i'm like an alien living in this strange land—a place where sweating off your entire backside is preferable to lifting your body up and walking 10 yards to a door. I assume some of them stared at me in wonderment and pity, thinking who in their right mind would choose to walk anywhere.

Are we not humans? Do we not have legs, muscular systems, lungs, blood, brains, etc—all coordinating with each other to make it possible for us to move? Have our bodies become so detached from our minds that a small, contradicting, self-defeating alien shouts out that we should do counter to what we're designed to do? It's a sad view. It's a view from a bizarre dream. It's a scene out of a movie i haven't seen that's about something that we like to think hasn't happened yet.