Ronald McDonald Held Hostage

Flash back to October 31, 2006. Yes, that’s Halloween. You’re brilliant.

That night, my school’s girl’s volleyball team had a playoff game. I went because I was a big fan of the team. The fan theme for the game was cleverly titled “Halloween costumes”. My friend Jason wore a striped long sleeve shirt and a red curly wig. He then painted his face to look like a clown. This wasn’t just any clown, but the one and only Ronald McDonald. I had the pleasure of driving him to the volleyball game that night.

After the game, we were quite hungry from cheering on the team. However, Jason and I are two very cheap individuals and didn’t want to pay for anything. It took us no time at all to realize that Ronald McDonald was the mascot of McDonald’s, a popular fast food joint. We stopped by a McDonald’s on the way home. We hopped out of the car, walked into McDonald’s, and Jason/Ronald proceeded to yell to everyone currently in the restaurant,

“I’M HOME!!!”

Everyone stared at us. No one said anything. Why? Beats me. It was Ronald McDonald inside of a McDonald’s. It’s like being surprised that there are dogs in PetSmart.

After an awkward silence, we walked to the counter. Jason/Ronald calmly asked if we could just charge our meal to Ronald’s tab. The employees giggled, spoke to each other in Spanish, and rejected us. I quickly noticed that the employees were speaking Spanish and rephrased his question,

“Oh…I get it. Can we just put our food on Ronald’s el tab-o?”

As if saying “el tab-o” rather than “tab” was going to help. It didn’t. They rejected us. Rejection wasn’t new to us. Why else do you think we didn’t have girls with us?

We headed to Burger King down the street. Why Burger King? Because Burger King is the home of Ronald’s enemy, The King. We walked in to Burger King. Jason/Ronald clearly stated that he was Ronald McDonald and threatened to kill The King if the BK employees did not give us free food.

They did not give us free food. We killed the King. The King you now see on TV commercials is just a man in a big-headed mask, not the real King.

With our heads down due to the lack of free food, we trudged on to the car and drove to the other McDonald’s in the area. We were feeling violent from killing The King, so we went for another violent approach. We pulled up to the next McDonald’s drive thru. Jason/Ronald jumped in the back seat. I boldly flew past the ordering speaker and stopped at the first window. A friendly co-worker of Ronald’s reluctantly came to the window and asked what the problem was. I calmly told her that I have Ronald McDonald hostage and haven’t fed him for a week and that if her fine establishment did not provide him with free food, he would die. In the middle of my explanation, a clearly distressed Ronald repeatedly yelled, “HELP! I NEED FOOD!” I answered his calls for help with several hits to his head, a nice touch for our show. The McDonald’s employee laughed. I asked her how she could laugh at a time when her beloved mascot was on the verge of death. Through laughter, she kindly asked me to pull up to the second window. As we pulled up, every employee in the restaurant quickly came to the window to watch our spectacle. Ronald yelled for help and I kept hitting him. He said, “PLEASE! ALL I NEED IS A DOUBLE CHEESEBURGER!” I reiterated this and asked the kind employees for a double cheeseburger for Ronald. After fully absorbing the idiocy that was my life, one of the employees left. After more shouts from Ronald and more hits from me, the same employee came back to the window with a bag in her hand. She handed it to me and I threw it at Ronald, said thank you, and sped away. Ronald slowly opened the bag. Wahoo! There was a glorious double cheeseburger within! Sadly, I had forgotten to ask for two, so we had to share it. Ronald took the bigger half. Stupid clown.

So in your face all you Chipotle lovers – it’s possible to get free food on Halloween without dressing like a giant burrito and making a fool out of yourself.