spooky crappy unhappy meals.

I know this is an old, and very familiar complaint. There's all sorts of things wrong with Happy Meals and fast food and the use of free plastic gimmicks to further entice our young ones into addiction, as if french fries (or, as Z calls them, "Fry-days!") weren't by themselves enough.

And so, first, yeah, a big ol' mea culpa, mea maxima culpa for giving up and feeding my precious ones crap because I'm sick and on my own while my spouse is out late at a Vestry meeting. Tonight we'll eat Vegetable Korma, I promise.

But honestly. It gets me every single time. The Question: "boy or girl?"

This time, the plastic gimmicks were Halloween buckets--not a bad idea. The choices were between Star Wars themed Angry Birds buckets and, yep you guessed it, Monster High.

I never answer the question "boy or girl" with either "boy" or "girl." I tell them which toy I prefer. This unfortunately did not translate well last night. The Question came back: "but, boy or girl?"

Finally I said, exasperated, "I have two girls who would prefer the Star Wars Angry Birds toys."

I mean, is there something unclear about saying "give us this one?" Is there some sort of McDonalds policy in place to never deviate from parceling out your plastic gimmicks according to rigid gender stereotypes? Is this why your Question is "boy or girl" and not "which toy would you like?"

And let's just not even get into the issues of handing my 2- and 7-year-olds Monster High. Really? I mean, really?

Yes, I know, none of this is at all surprising. And that, friends, is a measure of the dimension of this problem.