We Love America!
It’s a classic American scene—
an unnamed fast-food chain so busy
that lines in the mobile order, to-go, for here, and drive-throughs all wrap around the store.
The man who sits in the sticky, red booth seats
with a large, full-sugar Coke and two double patty burgers in hand
in this classic American scene
ponders which stocks to trade at 9 AM.
The shock on his face is priceless.
“Oh no! My stocks have dropped by two pennies…Whatever shall I do…”
To think that Americans have resorted to (essentially) legal gambling to keep themselves afloat,
while the American government spends $820 billion on the military annually,
certainly is inspiring.
Never mind…the government wants us to ignore the $35 trillion of accumulated debt.
It’s all to keep us safe, right ?
Let’s focus on the positives:
Accessible and affordable healthcare?
Let's make the average healthcare plan cost $477 a month. Totally doable for most Americans!
Lowering income tax so people less fortunate can afford basic necessities?
Let’s inflate prices of everything and raise tariffs on imported goods,
totally appealing to the majority of Americans who can afford to spend $20 on a dozen eggs!
Never mind…
Perhaps this is why Europe thinks Americans look like those dumb forest gnomes
who can’t clean, feed, or bathe themselves properly.
But of course, it’s classically American to die poor while the rich get richer.
Don’t worry, though, every night without fail, it’s the poor Americans who drive up
to the large, corporate, neon sign that feeds them oh so well.
So well that 43 percent of Americans are obese…
Now, America must deal with the consequences,
and it’s too hard to backtrack through decades of poor decisions.
Perhaps they haven't seen the repercussions yet, but they will.
They’ll watch the world flow onward while sitting idle with their 600-calorie vanilla milkshakes.
The stench of canola oil as it fries up loads of yellow strips of potato.
The stench of bleach as it cleans a customer’s upchucked beers and a 30-piece nugget meal.
That’s what I call a certified American classic.
Inspired by “American Classic” by Louis Simpson
Cynthia Cai is a Junior in high school from Houston, Texas. She has lived there all her life but has traveled to more countries than she can count on both her fingers and her toes. She loves the food in Houston, especially Tex-Mex, Thai, and Indian food. In her free time, you can find Cynthia reading a good high fantasy or science fiction novel, as well as sketching or painting. She has several golden and silver keys from Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. She was published last year in Hunted, an anthology of micro-fiction stories; her work is also forthcoming in a similar anthology, Trapped.
"Yum! Yum! Hot French Fries" by Old Shoe Woman is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
