Alyne’s Credit Crunch

Alyne is just like the rest of us: she depends on plastic and is suffering from the present-day credit crunch. Specifically, her lack of a new, loaded Arch card. For those of you who do not know what an Arch Card is, which would lead me to wonder what is wrong with you, it is a gift card from McDonald’s. She usually receives one for Christmas every year. Unfortunately, we forgot to get her one this Christmas.

Now, we’re a forgetful family anyway; forever misplacing keys, iPods and cell phones. We go to raid the pantry in the kitchen and mysteriously wind up in the garage. Hell, our parents don’t even call us by our names, but rather by a combination of all of our names: Deekatealynemeghan. That way, they don’t have to tell us apart. We forget where we parked at the mall, how to get to the mall, and in what year the millennium occurred. But we’ve never forgotten Alyne’s Arch Card before.

Year after year, we’ve given Alyne her Arch Card on Christmas Eve. It is kind of like the fee she exacts from us just in order to keep her around for the holidays. Well, actually, that’s not entirely true because she’s a chile con queso junkie, and since that’s what we eat on Christmas Eve, you can’t get rid of her until her chile con queso is manufactured, hot, and on a plate in front of her.

After she has had her fill of Christmas Eve chile con queso, she is allowed to open one present, which is always an Arch Card. ALWAYS. But not this year. She actually wound up opening a few presents, full of disappointment and furiously gesturing a universally understood gesture: the credit card swipe. Hand out, pinching an invisible card, and swiping downward. Everyone understands this gesture, and with a sinking feeling it was discovered that Alyne was going to be McDonald’s-less for the holiday season. Dejected, her twin, Kate, offered her a gift card to some barbecue joint, explaining that she could use that card to buy mashed potatoes and fried okra. Alyne was disappointed but she accepted the barbecue card. Unfortunately, however, Alyne is now in the same situation as so many other Americans: if she wants to eat at McDonald’s she will have to pay cash.

Never mind that Al’s previously gifted Arch Cards most likely have their full balances intact, except for the meager use they receive when she uses them during McDonald’s excursions with her work group. When her dad takes her to McDonald’s she makes him pay. She’s no fool, and she’s incredibly frugal. She probably has millions of dollars in loaded Arch Cards stuffed in her mattress.