Verdon Road resident and tenured Randolph-Macon University Literature Professor Richard Lowery (Left, after the episode was over) was flabbergasted Tuesday by a McDonald’s employee’s admission of “here go your drank” when offering him his #13 Meal medium soda cup.
“I have rarely heard such bastardization of the English language in a professional environment,” stated the high and mighty intellectual after he walked to the condiment station and angrily manhandled a recalcitrant ketchup pump in a futile effort to acquire ketchup for his “French-type potatoes”. “What the . . . it is such a gross abomination. I have never . . .” he trailed off as he dumped about a hundred little paper condiment cups on the floor. “God in Heaven!” he wailed as he stopped to pick up the now-useless cups before rising and cracking his head on the pump spout, breaking it off and smearing industrial-grade ketchup through his uncombed grey hair.
“Ow! Dammit!” Lowery shouted in the not-so-elegant English he just decried, drawing stares from the other more blue-collar patrons and disdain from the employee behind the counter. He then angrily walked over to the “drank” station and bumped his cup numerous times under the ice dispenser. The icemaker hummed but failed to deliver any ice, drawing more frustrated epitephs from the rapidly melting-down, formerly erudite Prof. Giving up on the ice, he decided to fill his cup with room temperature ice tea before carrying his tray to one of the plastic booths.
“The culture of abbreviated language, coupled with the electronic shortcut vernacular of text-messaging and email contributes to this coarsening,” said the cultured and more subdued Lowery just as he chowed down on his giant burger, accidentally discharging a sludge-like concoction of tomato, mustard and mayo out the back and down his shirt into the lap of his tweedy, baggy trousers. “MY GO . . . I SWEAR!” he bellowed as he scooped up the remnants with several tissue-thin napkins just as he bumped his tray and tipped over his “drank”, popping off the lid and pouring a 20-ounces of tepid sweet tea on top of the sloppy burger leftovers still in his lap.
At the end of his rope, he launched into a string of guttural obscenities that eventually led the manager to escort him out, where he continued his muffled tantrum from out in the parking lot, looking like a crazy man that tried to make a chef’s salad inside his pants.
Here go your drank, Professor.
