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.