A Lifetime Measured in Chicken Nuggets

I was sitting in a Paris McDonalds at 1:13am, a bottle of wine in my left hand and a chicken nugget in my right, wondering if anything has seen me in every stage of my life like a 20 piece chicken nugget from McDonalds has.

Between crisp bites of these golden nuggets dunked in a black pepper sauce that we don’t have in the states, I got a little sentimental.

The nugs have been there for me when my Granny would babysit my brother and I, and sneak us to the Golden Arches drive through without telling my parents. They were my meal of choice between games of middle school basketball tournaments. They were there at my absolute lowest when my first girlfriend shattered my heart into a million pieces.

They were there in the bed of my buddies pick-up truck, when my core group of friends were enjoying our last days in our hometown before heading off to our respective colleges. On my first ever solo trip in Japan, I found comfort in the familiar 20 piece when I was feeling overwhelmed as I stripped away external influences, and took the first steps to truly find out who I am as a human being.

They’ve seen my professional career go from production to accounting to real estate brokerage to tech sales. They’ve seen me pick up and put down countless hobbies: basketball, guitar, writing, a kombucha company, drums, video production, a podcast, voice lessons, making food videos, etc.

As I prepare to turn 30 and have finally started to figure out what I want to do with my life, there they were smiling at me in Paris. If everything else in life is changing, the 20 piece nuggets are always the same. They have seen every iteration of who I am as a man, and for that, I am grateful.