You Want Syrup With That?

My mother lives in Brunswick, Maine, roughly two-and-a-half hours from my home in Londonderry, New Hampshire. With a full-time job, writing, three kids and a granddaughter who lives with us, it's hard to get up to see her as often as I should, but this past Monday I was cruising up the Maine Turnpike, mid-morning, coffee in hand, when it occurred to me I was hungry. I had driven an hour-and-a-half, after all, with no breakfast.

Luckily for me, there's a Burger King at the traveler's plaza at Exit Three, so I pulled in, grabbed an order of French Toast Sticks, and hit the road again. They were pretty good, too.

Does everyone else know they serve maple syrup with those things? Because I sure didn't. But it wasn't a problem until I had finished eating, at which point I packed up my napkin in the little box the French Toast Sticks came in and stuck it in the Burger King paper bag and rolled the bag into a ball to throw it on the floor of the car...

...and ruptured the little packet the syrup came in. It oozed out over my hands, flowing thickly onto my lap and under my butt, soaking into the seat. At seventy miles an hour. In the passing lane.

By the time I had pulled back across traffic into the breakdown lane and got the car stopped - getting sticky syrup all over the steering wheel and turn signal, by the way - my jeans looked like, well, you can use your imagination if you really feel the need.

I found a sweater one of my daughters had left in the back seat, sopped up as much of the syrup as I could, all with the traffic zooming by a couple of feet away, and then sat on the sweater and drove the rest of the way to Brunswick, where I walked into Sears and bought a new pair of jeans. Then I drove to my mother's house.

I think I would rather have gone hungry.

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