Truths and untruths

I’m charmed by how many of you think I’d be more likely to have had a pilots license than to feel lukewarm about chocolate. But alas, my life hasn’t been that interesting, and I never did earn a pilots license, which may be just as well since I’m a little weird about heights. 🙂 But chocolate–I’ll eat it, I’ll happily give it to other people because I know it makes them happy, but I really could do without it without suffering.

And I really did get McDonalds to change their printed materials when I was 10, or around 10. Which is as much a story about my Mom as about me.

They were printing calendars back then, and I picked up a calendar and noticed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were missing. I was quite indignant about this.

Now, someone else’s Mom might have shrugged, told me either that that was how the world was and there was nothing I could do, or told me people make mistakes and I should let it go. My Mom looked up the address for McDonald’s headquarters and helped me to write a letter. She wrote a letter of her own, too, talking about how disappointed she was that the McDonald’s corporation considered groundhogs more important than the Jewish New Year.

Because I was 10 years old, I fully expected a response. And I got one: a few weeks later an apology and bunch of McDonald’s coupons arrived in the mail.

And more importantly to me and my Mom, the McDonald’s calendar has included Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur ever since. Or had for as long as I kept checking, which was years and years and years. (If anyone actually has a McDonald’s calendar now–if they still make them–look and let me know!)

My Mom, meanwhile, is now president of her Teamster’s local, and negotiates contracts for a living. Which, somehow, surprises me not at all.