Little known fact: I am scared of drive-thrus.
This is a quirk that stems from my irrational fear of car washes, I think. Or it’s born from some other bizarre facet of my psyche. I don’t really know, but I have actively avoided drive-thrus since I got my driver’s license ten years ago.
My new route to work features numerous drive-thrus that make food more accessible, which is convenient for someone with an hour commute, but for my first few shifts, all I did was mobile order Starbucks and pick it up for a dose of caffeine on the ride home. No drive-thrus – I’d rather go inside the establishment and order something “to go” than to go through a drive-thru.
But, the other night, I closed at work, so I wasn’t ready to leave the building until around 10:30, and then a snafu with the alarm system kept me there until around 11. I was very, very done with the day by that point – because a very nice police officer also scared the living daylights out of me while I was working out the alarm problem, because he thought I looked suspicious sitting alone in my car in front of the building. Which I did, I guess, but it was a shot of adrenaline I didn’t need.
As I was finally driving home, I passed a Wendy’s, a Burger King, a Sheetz… and then I saw it. Those horrible, beautiful golden arches. McDonald’s.
My stomach rumbled, and I knew what I had to do. I had to face my fear in order to scrape some semblance of joy from the night.
I pulled up to the order box, heart pounding, and ordered my favorite item on the menu – an M&M McFlurry. And, by some miracle, their ice cream machine was working! I carefully pulled up to the next window and paid, then pulled up to the last window to claim my prize. The employee held it out to me, but it was there, at the final window, that one of my drive-thru related fears materialized… I hadn’t pulled up quite close enough.
This might have, in my earlier years, prompted a bit of an emotional crisis. I was once driving on the Mass Pike and didn’t pull up close enough to take the ticket in the toll station and had to get out of my car, serenaded by the blaring horns of fellow drivers. It was an irrationally traumatic moment for me, and heightened the fear of drive-thrus. So, this same scenario unfolding on a chilly October evening, in the twenty seventh year of my life, could have sparked an equally upsetting episode.
But, it didn’t. I just put my car in park and leaned out the window a little further, and the McFlurry was mine. It was a smooth drive home that evening. Not only did I conquer a fear, but I got one of my favorite sweet treats in the process.
And maybe – just maybe – I can take on some bigger drive-thrus now, too.
Frostwritten 