Et Tu, Hamburgler?

So once again I bring you "True Adventures From (Suburban) McDonalds".

Yes I've seen "Supersize Me". And yes, it’s frightening how quickly an over-processed foodstuff like McD's can compromise the human immune system.

But have you had the fries lately?

Thank you.

And there I was, watching my three year old daughter munch down aforementioned grease-sticks of joy when something caught her eye: The McDonald's contribution to plastic-mold architecture.

No, the other contribution besides the faux-buttocks curved plasti-slab banquette seat that leaves you feeling like you've been violated by 40 pounds of heaving, sweaty polymers after sitting crammed in to one like too many fries in a basket.

That's right~The Human Habitrail.

Call it what you will.

Playland, Adventure Land, Ronald's Funhouse~but let's call it what it truly is: a giant rat trap for the unsuspecting.

You've seen it. Giant plastic tubes suspended above ground, linked by tiny plastic stairs, interconnected by tiny plastic connector passageways.

It sits before you, multicolored and promising of unbridled fun for you and your little one.

There's even a sign, caring and cautionary in its message "Small Children Not Allowed Without Parent".

Clever ploy. Any dad worth his middle age sees a sign like that and can feel his chest puff out like some past his prime superhero determined to jam his pork chop legs in to those too small tights and fight injustic one last time.

Which is exactly what they want.

I vaguely remember turning to my wife, catching her eye as Ella and I climbed in to the first tube-of-hell.

I recall seeing her shake her head, small smile crease her face.

At the time I thought she was thinking, "You go Superdad".

I now realize she was thinking "How many times are you going to crawl in to one of those things and panic before you remember you're claustrophobic you idiot?".

Like any surrealist life-moment frozen in time, I had forewarning.

A five-year-old boy had already crawled in to the trap ahead of us. Hearing us enter he turned to see Ella and since he was all of two years older than her, called it exactly at he saw it. “Come here baby, crawl to me!”.

Then, seeing me half-crawling up behind her he paused a moment, then called me exactly as he saw it “Um..come on big boy!”.

Jamming my body up and past the fake plastic stairs while holding on to E for her dear life wasn’t too hard. In fact, it was kind of fun.

Until we got to the tube. The “Tube” is (if you’re a 40 yr old man who eats at McDonald’s) a not very large plastic tube that’s suspended about nine feet in the air. If you’re a 35 pound three year old, then you’re basically a mini-cooper in the Lincoln Tunnel.

I was the Titanic turned sideways in the Suez Canal.

The Tube moves when you crawl in it. Especially if though you used to be a pretty trim 165 lbs in your fighting days, the last fight you had was a quick and brutal one round KO to a pint of Ben And Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.

Ella was a good five feet ahead of me, wheeling along when the first panic wave hit me.

Panic’s great. It’s the ultimate attention getter because it travels at light speed via every firing synapse in your brain and it screams I’M FCUKING JAMMED IN A TUBE AND I CANNOT BREATHE.

Which wasn’t exactly true. I wasn’t jammed, I just couldn’t bring myself to move. And I could breathe, but my breath was funny sounding. Like I was taking too big gulps of air through a straw. Little, forced wheezy breaths.

Through the small cascading sheet of sweat blocking my vision, I could visualize headlines in local papers “Big Boy Meets Tragic End In Tube”.

The Tube felt suddenly smaller. And it seemed darker inside then I remember. Ella was just ahead of me, doing fun little pony-kicks, her back legs flying up then whacking down on the tube behind her which made the whole suspiciously-engineered contraption shake like the death rattle.

Think about it. You’re a young, talented architect just out of school. The I.M. Pei. Head full of stress and counter-stress equations, ready to design the next great monument of technological wonder.

Think the firm’s senior partner comes to you and says “Hey, Umberto~we want you to cut your teeth on one of those new McDonald’s playland tubes. Get out there and make us proud”.

Exactly.

Which, especially at that moment when the whole tube began actually swaying in mid-air thanks to Pony-girl’s bucking, begged the question~who’s in charge of engineering and constructing these things?

And then it hit me.

Hamburgler.

Sure, he had his moment in the 80’s. But basically, he’s what~some kind of fast food convict, right?

Guy’s in prison stripes. On lifelong parole. They always say guys in the joint punch license plates in shop as part of their workday.

I’m pretty sure Hamburgler is sitting somewhere, cigarette hanging from his mouth putting together plastic tubes.

And as his little “middle finger” to the man, occasionally leaving out one or two of the hanging rings. So you know, it wobbles a bit more.

And every night Hamburgler goes to bed, he makes sure the lojack alarm-light on his ankle is green pulls the covers up to his chin and rests soundly knowing somewhere, in some McDonald’s Big Boy is suspended in mid-air, sweating like large fries in the salting rack.