McDonalds Car

My brother and I had this Hot Wheel track when we were kids. The car would speed down a blue plastic incline and do a loop-de-loop before flying off a ramp and onto another set of track ahead. Out of all our cars, only three could make the jump: the unlikely purple van car, the Corvette car, and the motherfucking baddest car of them all - the McDonalds car. The McDonalds car would zoom nearly straight through the loop-de-loop and rocket off the ramp and onto the landing 12" away, and it had perfect form every time. The frame and chassis burned in a hot cherry-red paint, and the signature golden arches tattooed on the hood were a blonde bombast of yellow erupting out of my sexy-sleek-streetcar-tire-sporting-blood-machine. Man that car could fly.

I loved that car, but I couldn't understand why the garage of cars belonging to my middling pack stood so far askew from my precious McDonalds car. The car had a power I couldn't fully understand. They were from the same company; the builds looked the same. I'm no astrophysicist. I couldn't rattle my pissant brain with the varied qualities of aerodynamics, if that's in fact what astrophyscists do (which, in turn, also concerns me, because I feel like that's something of which I should be sure). All I know is that car jumped the track and landed on the other side as if it were the Gospel truth on Sunday and every other day.

There is something though that I missed in while lost in those strained, palm-to head hours of boyish pondering. I had to admit I was the one who arranged the track. I decided the space and forethought the length of the jump. I was the one who inadvertently tinkered my Hot Wheels track into a well-oiled foolproof mechanism, a mechanism tailor-fit to my reckless McDonalds speed demon. Essentially I supplied the resources and selected the environment, and ultimately I set the stakes. I chose the car's calculated and measured success. A thrilling fear for all, but still a path laid and made special for one.

It's funny how life can bring us to the point at which we're disposed and subjected to the flimsy whims of mass and momentum. Speedsters zip on hellrides through the gauntlet, and we hear the sickening crunch of car wrecks as we teeter on the clifftop at the starting line with engines revving. The counter's on 2 of 3, and flashes before the gunshot we each pause to wonder, "Was I really built for this?"

I can only hope I'm driving that car.