French fries and their taint...

I'm going to need anyone who bothers to read this to stay with the entire thing, it'll all be perfectly clear at the end. I refused to put this on Facebook mostly because of length, but also because I get tired of drama there. Moving on...

 Two days ago upon returning home from work one of my tires went flat due to an alignment issue that can never be properly repaired. This in itself is a stressful experience for a man in my position. I have four children and a wife to maintain on half an income. An incredibly meager income I might add, but anyways. I spent most of that day back at my house and in somewhat of a tizzy regarding a personal matter directly linked to my finances. It was a rather rough day. During which my lovely wife was trucking about town with three kids in a car with a donut and no cell phone because I'm an asshole. Fortunately they were all fine and dandy and returned home without a problem. So finally I wind down and go to bed. I may have gotten four hours of sleep that afternoon before waking up to go to work.

 Still with me? I hope so....

During work that night I accepted all kinds of suggestions as to where I should go for cheap tires, most of my choices lied in the city of Lakeland, maybe 15 miles away, I dunno, google it. I finished my job that night surprisingly early so I opted to go home and surprise my wife. That all turned out pretty well and was quite possibly the only good part of what turned out to be a shitty day. My wife Rainbow didnt get a whole lotta sleep herself that night so it caused a degree of irritability on both our parts. Nonetheless we rope our three kids (Please note that my fourth child stays with his mother) so three kids one of them being a six month old child and paced them all in our car to head towards lakeland for what shouldve been a thirty minute to an hour affair. Much to our collective dismay it turned into at least a two hour fiasco of driving to three or four different tire places before finally settling for one that ended up being 10 minutes from my house. During this hubbub my kids, Rainbow and I decided we were hungry coupled with the the screaming infant it became quite a fuckaroo. In our haste to appease everyone and given our limited finances we dropped in to a nearby McDonald's for something quick, not a meal, because we have all that at home, but something to keep our stomachs busy. Two small fries, two chicken sandwiches and a large sprite totaled to a little over five dollars, which is actually not in our price range, but you do what you must when things get hectic.

 Now pay attention because we're getting into the reason I've bothered to write this in the first place.

Gabriel is six months old, youngest and last of my children, and he is blossoming wonderfully, Crawling, growing and eating. It's a joy to watch all of this happen. Most particularly the food part, my first born and second of my four kids has extremely picky nature regarding food, we're working on it though. Gabriel however eats anything an infant is allowed to eat at his age given restraints regarding manual dexterity, low control of his throat muscles, and lack of teeth. Everything he eats has to be somewhat mushy. The prospect of not having a picky eater thrills me. Gabriel's mother Rainbow doing what she has done with her other two children sticks mostly to breast feeding but has begun to supplement Gabriel's diet by pureeing produce we buy at the grocery store. In extreme cases he gets a jar of baby food when time doesnt allow Rainbow to make his food. I think that this is a fantastic way to do things given the motivation and resources.

Ahem.... We gave the children their small bag of fries and ate our sandwiches. They were about as good as I expected them to be given that they are 99 cents. We decided that now would be a fantastic opportunity to see if our son would eat a french fry. Just one. Of course he gobbled it up. We took a picture of this moment because we take pictures of our son nearly everyday and subject our friends on Facebook to them daily as well. So we're back at home, noting particularly eventful happened after that so I went to bed, it was probably three or so before I fell asleep.

If you've made it this far I'm quite pleased the story portion is almost over...

Gabriel is quite enamored with his mother, so much so that he rarely gives her a moment to herself without carrying on loudly. This is a source of frustration, but one we're capable of dealing with. I'm accustomed to coming out of my bedroom at roughly 8:30pm to see kids doing what kids do and Gabriel screaming his brains out while his poor tired mother prepares dinner. Tonight was slightly different because Rainbow spent a very good deal of time arguing back and forth with an old friend of mine about the perils of french fries. Oh, and the hormones associated with the monthly hemorrhaging of uterine blood from her nether-regions. Rainbow was quite distraught over the ordeal as she viewed my friend's dialogue as an attack on her ability to raise children. I read the entire thing and I really do get both points of view. My friend was trying to get the point across that french fries are toxic and linked to many types of illness including cancer. He demonstrated his point by referring to a study that further seemingly proved his point. I absolutely do not approve of his disrespectful methods to which I intend to address soon, but for the sake of the story I'm going to continue. My wife and many others who are her friends made the point that people have been eating these things for years and all it's done is made people fat. Which is common sense logic and while it may prove later on that it is fallacious, right now it's good enough for the mother of my child and matriarch of the household. That was the basic gist of the whole argument with lots of one person calling another person stupid and another calling the other side obsessed. I opted to not chime in immediately mostly because I had to be at work and I needed time to do other things.

What happens after that doesnt matter, I spent all night throwing around bags of dog food... typical walmart stuff.

If you've managed to read through that entire deal without closing the window and giving up I will now present my retort, this is the good part in my opinion or it is the reason I even bothered to write the whole set up.

Here goes.... I don't give two flying shits about the contents of McDonalds french fries. That's the short version. Just like hot dogs, I know what's in them and I eat them anyway it doesn't bother me at all. I have read the facts as noted by my friend and while it's probably true I'm going to explain why I still just don't care.

In the pantheon of things that I'm responsible for and the things as a father I have to worry about, french fries are easily at the bottom three things of my quite extensive list of dangers. I akin the french fry danger to cellphone usage giving us tumors or standing too close to a microwave and all sorts of other "dangers" that have never really done a significant damage to our population. I literally just googled "deaths related to french fries" and the most that shows up deals with fat content and heart disease, Two things that also are low on my list of concerns. Here's some of my real concerns:

-Homelessness: This one is a very real scenario for us because without the help of my best friend this is exactly what would occur. I mean I'm sure there's other methods, but this one is what's working.

-Eating in general: I make DICK financially, what little I make I contribute as much as I can sparing car insurance, gas and sundries. Food is provided by the State of Florida through their program. This upsets me to no end because it really screws with my "provider" role that I'm supposed to play

-Maintaining employment: Isn't as rough as one may think because I'm fantastic at my crappy job. But I have to work at it and show up and such so yeah....

-Maintaining transportation: Keeping up with my wife's vehicle and insuring it lasts till we can afford a new one. Granted I'm not allowed to drive because of some financial obligations, we get by with Rainbow carting us EVERYWHERE.

-Dangers in my house to my infant son: He crawls now and for the life of me I can't get my hard headed children to understand they can't leave small things on the floor. I scour Gabriel's play area several times a day to make sure he can't pick anything small up and choke on it.

-Keeping Momma happy: Because if she's not... no one else will be. -Public school related issues: Like poor education, bullying, etc...

-Dangerous flora and fauna of central Florida, child predators, alien invaders, home invaders, domestic terrorists, foreign terrorists, oppressive government, religious fanatics, religious anything, watching shitty kids shows, nerf herders, aggressive advertising campaigns, zionists, internet policing, world bankers, local bankers, people with terrible body odor...etc...etc...: No brainers here.

This is a small sampling of things that I really deal with. Parenting takes up a great deal of time so much that I don't do anything for myself or with my wife hardly at all. That's not a complaint, I'm happy to do this job because I worked hard to get here, I went through hell for a while and was not capable of being a father to even my own son, much less three more kids. Suffice it to say that if I spend time worrying about every single thing that is potentially dangerous to my kids I would literally have to close them in a room, make my own bread, and feed the bread and water daily. The bread is even questionable, actually the water could be to. I think someone needs to continue the fight over fluoridated water. Actually lets just research regular water, eventually we will find some kook scientist who could make the case that even OXYGEN is a carcinogen and holy fucking shit STOP BREATHING!!!! Oxygen is flammable ya know....

Am I making it clear? I really do get it. The reality is this: Even if I wanted to feed my kids french fries I literally can't afford to. It's bad when McDonalds is a luxury. Where I live I can't grow a crop to ensure my kids eat completely natural food, such is my lot at the moment. Fuckin' A I can't even afford "organic" food. Has anyone considered that just maybe it's the same thing with a different label and a higher price tag? Let's get into this.... Let's say this stuff is better for you. Why is it more expensive? Maybe it takes a great deal to make it, I'm not sure but I know one thing, food that's not "organic" is considerably closer to my price range. I simply can't afford the lifestyle. Which in itself could actually be a way for rich people to continue to kill poor people slowly, simply make healthy food more expensive. Here's one more thing, my walmart employee discount covers all manner of junk food, but not legitimate food you have to prepare and serve. Why?

 I got off subject but I'm wrapping it up now. Fallacious thinking or not I'm gonna do what I gotta do to feed my kids, a french fry treat once a month, while potentially hazardous, in my opinion is worth the risk. If this is a problem, make your own kid and good luck making him eat what you do.

That's basically it. If you made it to the end you get four internets and a cheesy grin in person from yours truly.