4 Reasons Why You Are A Chicken, But Not A McNugget

We seem especially fond of all these lists lately, don't we? I see them everywhere. I suppose because it is reducing the whole bird down to the McNuggets that we can digest quickly from our smart phones while we do other things. You know the lists: "7 Things You Say To Your Children That Will Destroy Their Will To Live", "25 Things That Happy People Do Better Than You", "18 Ways To Make Your Life Perfect", "147 Things Never To Say To Me Even If I Am Moody and Unpredictable and You Meant Well" and so on. Perhaps I paraphrased a few of those titles, but you know what I'm talking about.

Let's dish, mmm-kay? McNuggets are manufactured meat. They are the offal and beaks and other scraps flavored and packaged and brilliantly marketed as cheap, bite-sized food. We all know this. Some of us eat them anyway, some of us crusade against them, some of us wouldn't touch them with a ten-foot pole but feed them to our children occasionally. None of us confuses McNuggets with actual chicken.

We are the actual chickens, folks. I'm going to chase this metaphor around the barnyard a little bit. We are the living, breathing, flapping birds. I say "chicken" and you might imagine this:

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Or this:

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I imagine this:

My late cat, Chicken, helping with the laundry.

Do you see my point, here? 

McNuggets are all right sometimes when you just need a little something to get you through the afternoon, but as a steady diet, they will give you diarrhea at best and diabetes at worst.

I get a little antsy when we boil down the human psyche and all of its complex wonder to a few bite-sized pieces and then we hand them around in the greasy cardboard container of the internet as if they were actual food for thought. These lists are entertaining; they have their place, I suppose. I can read the "7 Things That Perfect People Do" and either pat myself on the back for scoring 4 out of 7, or I can read it and post it on my Facebook page as a wink and a nod to all my friends who are far less than perfect, or I can read it and feel like crap because here is another list of things that I'm failing at. Maybe all three at once. But over time, a steady diet of these over-simplified, over-generalized, deep fried bits of beak and feather can make you pretty unhealthy.

We chickens are a varied and beautiful species. We are also ridiculous. Sometimes we stop laying eggs, sometimes we sit in our own poo. Sometimes we go over to the neighbors' yard and repeatedly uproot their freshly planted pansies as if we are on some sort of seek and destroy mission (not that I'm bitter about that at all.) Sometimes we wedge our heads in trees and need the help of a small child in a helmet to get us out.

jBird and Golden Eagle

Of course, we're not chickens. McNugget-ized or otherwise. We're people who seek to better ourselves; who want to do what's best for our communities and our families and all that. We are also people who, by the very fact of being human, say and do appalling things, make terrible mistakes, hurt people. A lot of the time, we don't do nearly as much or as well as we know we should. Most of the time, we're doing the best we can with the information and the resources we have.

The greatest minds in the world have devoted themselves for thousands of years to studying and understanding humans and there are still not very many clear or definitive answers to the largest questions we ask. Chances are, a blogger listing his or her personal experience isn't going to get it completely right, either. 

These McNuggets are seductive. I love checklists. They make me feel like I've accomplished something, they help keep me on track, they help organize my thoughts. They are not the whole story. And ultimately, I can't operate from anyone else's To-Do list. There may be some overlap, but no one's going to go and return my overdue library books or understand why there is simply the word "stuff" on my grocery list except me. Likewise, "The 63 Things You Say To Your Daughter That Will Undoubtedly Make Her Anti-Feminist and Bulimic". 

It's time to step back and take a look at the whole bird.

If you are struggling with illness or depression or an emotionally abusive relationship with someone, do not take these things lightly. A 20-piece McNuggets will not satisfy those particular hungers and could do more harm than good. Get real help, professional help, spiritual help, whatever you need. A handy checklist of happy thoughts is not the solution.

If you are basically all right and are just amusing yourself, so be it. I eat McNuggets, too, sometimes. But if you start to get a tummy ache and nothing tastes quite right, stop and think about why. There are more than enough reasons in the world to hate ourselves, and honestly, a lot of them are justified. It is the onus of human existence to try and deal appropriately with the abominable things that are within us. This is a difficult enough task without adding layers of manufactured meat product guilt because I call my kids "freak" as a term of endearment. 

There is no magic, one-size-fits-all checklist of how to escape this life without the ruffling of feathers. I wish there were, because I would give it to my kids and loved ones and I would never have to see them hurt or make mistakes or just really foul things up irreparably (pun not initially intended, but left there, nonetheless.) I would give it to myself so that I wouldn't have to do those things, either. According to the font of all knowledge, Chicken McNuggets come in four shapes: Bell shaped, Boot shaped, Bone shaped, and Ball shaped. It rightfully gives us the willies to think of mashed up chicken parts crammed into four, and only four, wholly unnatural shapes. Even if it gives you delicious willies, you at least realize there is no actual part of a chicken called "The Bell".

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It should give us the willies to do that to ourselves as well. Step back and flap your ridiculous wings. 

Do I need to make a list of reasons why?

It's Kind of Crazy and It Hurts

My Hooligan woke up this morning and asked me to scratch his back. "Harder, Mama. Really scratch it. A little to the right. No, the other way. Up, up... perfect. How many days until Christmas?" A little early morning subtraction lesson and hey! It's sixteen days until Christmas.

"How many days until today?" I asked him. He narrowed his eyes and rolled them at the same time. Can you picture it? He pursed his lips and silently held up his hand in a closed fist: zero. "What's today?" he asked me. "Today is Monday. It's a day we get to enjoy." I drive my children crazy with this. He yawned and stretched and lazily rolled onto me so that his face was right in mine - morning breath and all. "I know, Mom. I need ten more minutes of cuddles before I get up." Ten turned into twenty and then we decided that school lunch sounded good today.

I spent yesterday evening on the phone with my sister. She had some questions about the mechanics of small-human care. Her baby boy is the most beautiful boy ever born and is only just a week old. We talked nipples and blankets for a while and then she paused. She took a deep, shaky breath and sniffled a bit. My tough little sister almost never cries. She sounded like the child with whom I shared a room and whose hair I used to brush and braid.

"I love him so much," her voice broke for real. "Sometimes I just look at him and it hurts, I love him so much. I feel like I'm going to break in half. It's not pretty. It's huge and it's scary."
"I know, baby. That's how it feels sometimes."
"But don't you think that's neurotic? I mean other mothers love their babies and they don't feel like that. They don't break and fall apart."
"Of course they do. They just don't talk about it to you. Because it's kind of crazy and it hurts."
"Will that go away? Is it hormones? I feel like I am breaking."
"No, it doesn't really go away. You just get used to it."
"Great. I don't know how I'm going to live."

I have no useful advice to give her in this department. How do you tell someone who is exhausted and overwhelmed and up to her eyeballs in brand new experiences that yes, you just break in half and then you keep going until you break in half again, and then you keep going some more.

My husband and I were talking about it later. I told him: "It's like when you first get married and you have these flashes of overwhelming fear. Where you think to yourself, 'This person just gave me the rest of their life and I could utterly destroy them.'" He laughed and said, "Yup. You could, but you don't."

Love is a fearful thing. Trust is a fearful thing. They are large and they hurt. They break you in half. They push you until you think you can't bear it anymore, and then you can. They wouldn't be worth a whole awful lot if they didn't do these things. It's kind of crazy and it hurts. Well-wishers and greeting card writers tell us "Enjoy every minute, it goes by so fast" and we feel like there's something a little bit wrong with us when we admit that it's huge and scary. I have not enjoyed every minute with my children. Sometimes the minutes that brought the most joy have almost crushed me. It's not always pretty.

My husband and I spent the rest of our evening in huddled conference about how we would face this next phase of parenting in our own lives; marveling at how far from diapers and feeding and sleeping positions we've come. We conceded we still know almost nothing about the raising of small humans. And yet we've all lived.

This morning while my Hooligan was giving me sass and demanding back scratches and being such a cliche by asking how many days until Christmas, I felt it again. Like I might just break in half. Like I might just grab his big old head and squeeze it until it popped. And then we got up and went in search of his sister and some breakfast.

Because somehow, we've found a way to live.