I don’t eat fast food and I hadn’t been to McDonald’s in years, maybe even a decade, until last night.

Last night, I got together with some friends to celebrate my birthday which I missed last month because I was sick. Just before I left to drive one of my friends home, someone mentioned McDonald’s and my fate was sealed. Neither of us had anywhere close to enough to eat that day and the Big Macs were calling. We went to the drive-thru, then sat in the parking lot and ravenously ate before resuming our trip to her house.

There’s nothing about a Big Mac that resembles a hamburger. You can’t taste whether there is any meat on it at all. And white bread, a fatty sauce, strong onions, tasteless cheese – this isn’t something I’d eat.  And yet, at nine o’clock at night, having eaten almost nothing since breakfast, it was the best thing I’d ever tasted.