For five long years I fasted from fast food. It started as a short-term resolution to detox over a season of cross country training, in the hopes that a nutritious turn would mean a faster turnover. I was 15.It turned into a long-term abstinence. It wasn't so much an active effort to avoid fast food. I just stopped craving burgers alltogether.
It took until the end of my teenage years, before I was old enough to sense a nostalgia for fast food. It might have been a fleeting sniff of a whopper, an advertisement for a juicy char grilled burger that triggered the sentiment. Whatever it was, it brought me to my senses enough to realize that it was time to break the spell.
I would ring in my 20th birthday as the Burger Queen.
Since then, a birthday lunch at Burger King has become ritual. Every year I am joined by a different group of friends or family for a hit of greasy burger and fries - and a wash of coke.
It has been eight years running. I haven't missed a beat. Every year it has been a different BK to boot. Once I even celebrated in Kaukura, New Zealand at an obscure BK joint. This year, Maddy and I made our way to Nottingham's city centre for a bite. It was enough that Maddy had never seen the menu at burger king and neither of us really new where to place and pick up the order. But we stood out even more wearing plastic star-shaped shades my sister had sent just for the occassion.
They were a nice disguise in case anybody we knew saw us mawing down Whoppers in the city centre. Not that I have anything to hide - it's a shameless ritual....one that I take pride in for sticking to for so long...
At the end of the ordeal our digestive systems had taken a hit. But my birthday tradition had been satisfied. And the tradition will continue - so save the date for next year.
