#100. The Amazing McPizza (Wednesday, December 30, 1998)

What was your best day…of dining at a cheap establishment?

Everybody grows up to have their own special relationship with McDonald’s – whether it is love, hate, somewhere in between, or some strange combination of the two. But for every kid in the world, at least, it is the pinnacle of fine dining.

Two months before this day, I had won four McDonald’s coupons (along with a cool ghost banner) for having the best Halloween activity book in the class. And I gave two of those coupons to my best friend Harry Liu so we could go to McDonald’s together some time.

However, they were set to expire at the end of the year, which Harry and I only realized when we saw those coupons on my desk while hanging out at my house on this second-last day of the year. So he called his dad and got him to take us there for dinner.

Well, first we had to stop by Harry’s house for him to get his coupons, which it turned out he had misplaced. But no matter. We were still going, despite the weather outside being something like -30 that evening.

Seeing as I was the only one with coupons, and mine were for a drink and a fries, his dad ended up paying for most of it. This was back when they still had McPizza’s, so we each got one of those as the main course. And we each got an ice cream for dessert. I can see why they ended up discontinuing the pizzas, but I thought they tasted better than any other fast food pizza brands. Must have been all the hamburger grease.

It was an amazing dinner, as we just sat there in the McDonald’s restaurant; taking our time to savor the delicious McPizza slice by slice, while talking on and on and on for what felt like hours. No other meal, proper or otherwise, would be able to compare to that one for a long time.

And just to wrap everything up, we went back to Harry’s place afterwards, and played my Monopoly game (#103) on his computer for what felt like another couple of hours.

One of the most jam-packed days in my early childhood, all of it spent with my best friend in the whole world. And all thanks to a pair of two-dollar coupons.