The McDonalds at 11th and Cornhusker knows what to expect come 8:30 Wednesday nights. They’ll be suddenly inundated by a rash of students in their late teens and early twenties, all of them ordering a couple of items off the dollar menu and sticking around for at least an hour.
The manager is out to greet the visitors as they come in–and more often than not, a half a dozen employees will make their way to the front counter to exchange some remark with one or another of the guests.
We’ve been going to McDonalds after youth group since my brother first got a job there five years ago. Then, I was a youth sponsor, chaperoning a gaggle of giggling girls. The “group” that went to McDonalds after youth group was me and a bunch of youth group kids.
As we’ve gotten older, so has the demographic of the “group”. I go after Bible study. Jeremy (the youth pastor) drops by. Joshua (a youth sponsor) comes. John and Steve (who sponsor for Rock Solid, the kids group) come. Joanna comes after she’s done doing nursery for all the Wednesday night church events. Debbie stops in after classes. And there’s still the group of high school students: Tim and Grace and Kayla and John and Eli and Elinor and Brittany and others.
We take over the little nook with its two circular corner booths and little table and armchair lounge. We talk and we tease and occasionally we take pictures. We have fun. We hang out.
It’s a relaxing time, a do-nothing time. Everybody’s just being.
And then there’s the occasional game of hangman.
Which morphs into drawing smiley-faces.
Which becomes drawing emoticons (which others scribble out.)
Then someone draws a picture of someone getting blown up by a hand-grenade.
And someone tries to write an onomatopoeia of the crazy noise he makes every so often.
Which somehow leads to genie jokes.
And then someone comments on my grading pen–and discovers that I grade with the blood of former students.
Bet you didn’t know that.
I don’t really share it often.
But now you know.
Students beware of taking a class by Miss Menter. :-P
Sounds like you all had a good time last night! (=
Have we really been going there for 5 years now? Oh and you forgot to mention all the marine stories and Grace’s dancing :p lol
Umm…Grace told me you wouldn’t be going because there was bowling and pizza. Hmm…
But, I needed to be at Bible study and actually got the much better thing!
Grace was misinformed, I guess. I don’t know how the decision was made. I went because I was hungry and had papers to grade–I worked for 30-45 minutes before the rest showed up.