FEATURE — “Big Mac, Mc DLT, a Quarter-Pounder with some cheese, Filet-O-Fish, a hamburger, a cheeseburger, a Happy Meal, McNuggets, tasty golden French fries . . .” I sang loudly, my plump eight-year-old cheeks and chin nestled in my still pudgy palms.
I trailed off, unable to remember what came next no matter how many times I listened. “I’m never going to win that million bucks,” I lamented to my sister.
She and I sat, splayed out on the blue carpet of our shared bedroom in front of her portable yellow record player. A mini LP turned round and round, the thin needle of her machine tracing its way dutifully around the cardboard promotional round with the golden arches.
My sister, four years my senior, continued beside me “big-Big Breakfast, Egg McMuffin, hot hotcakes and sausage, maybe biscuits, bacon…”
“Wait, start it again,” I begged. I was sure I could master it if only she played it one more time. And if only I could stop thinking about that icey Coke after every mention of a French fry.
Even at eight, I was still the baby she’d spent hours pushing in a doll stroller around the neighborhood, my rear-end almost dragging on the sidewalk as we went, and she was my doting big sister. So, she lifted the needle arm and placed it at the outermost ring, every time I asked her.
We must have listened to that record close to a thousand times that summer. We never did win any money, but McDonald’s got plenty of ours.
Clearly, their promotion worked as intended.
And is still working on some level. It’s been thirty-four years and I still remember that record and those lyrics and how good a Big Mac and fries tasted after hours of listening.
Hiking in the foothills of Salt Lake last week, an airpod nestled in one ear, the memory of that record came flooding back again as I listened to an episode of the “On Being” podcast with host Krista Tippett and guest Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Kimmerer is a professor of botany at SUNY, an expert on mosses, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, and one of my favorite writers about the natural world.
She and Tippett were having a conversation about the animacy of the natural world when Kimmerer said something that made me quite literally stop in my tracks. She said, “on average, children today recognize 100 corporate logos and only 10 plants.”
From my perch on the side of the mountain, the golden arches and echos of “Big Macs and Filet-o-Fishes” suddenly with me, I looked around. In front of me, waist high green grasses danced up the hill with the wind, their slightly purple tips catching the light just so before bending over. Nearer ahead of me, bright yellow pistoned and petalled flowers bursting from messes of large green leaves stood sentry on either side of the rocky trail. And at my ankles, a crop of five-petaled lilac flowers hovered gently.
And I realized I didn’t know any of their names. Not the dancing grasses. Not the yellow sentries. Not the lilac hoverers. Nor any of their friends.
This, despite purchasing a Western wildflower guidebook with loads of glossy pictures and descriptions at the start of the pandemic. And despite hiking among them more than at least fifty times.
I’d tried to learn what was what, and who was who, but only with occasional effort. Nothing like the hours I spent in front of the portable record player while it spun the cardboard record with the golden arches.
I felt sad for the children of which Robin Wall Kimmerer spoke. And for myself, because I am one of them. In spirit if nothing else.
A week later, off the mountain and sitting in my car at a stop light in a busy neighborhood, I saw a fat, reddish, brown squirrel sitting on a blue bus bench. It sat upright, tail splayed out with bushy care to its right, looking as if it was there to actually catch a bus.
I looked at it. It looked at me. It cocked its head. And when it did, I thought, “If a squirrel can catch a bus, then what’s my excuse for not doing anything differently?”
So, I guess I will. Do something different that is: I’ll stop being a sad statistic and I’ll learn at least ten plant names. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally forget that McDonald’s menu song to boot.
Kat Dayton is a columnist for St. George News. Any opinions given are her own and not representative of St. George News staff or management.
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