Ronald McDonald
+ + +When Ronald McDonald takes off his striped shirt,his coveralls, his painted face: when he no longer lookslike anyone or anything special, sitting next to women
+in bars or standing in the aisle at the grocery,is he no longer Ronald? Is he no longer happy to kicka soccer ball around with the kids in the park,
+is he suddenly unable to enjoy the french frieshe gets for his fifty percent off? I’d like to thinkthat he takes Ronald off like a shirt, hangs him
+in a closet where he breathes darkly in the musk.I’d like to believe that we are able to slough off selveslike old skin and still retain some base self.
+Of course we all know this is not what happens.The Ronald leering at women drunkenly is the same whothe next day kicks at a ball the size of a head.
+He is the same that hugs his children at night,who has sex with his wife on the weekends when they’renot so tired to make it work, who smiles holding
+a basket of fries in front of a field. He cannottake off the facepaint or the yellow gloves. They arestuck to him like so many feathers with the tar
+of his everyday associations. His plight is thatof everyone’s—we are what we do who we are.
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