The Restorative Power Of The Chick-Fil-A Banana Pudding Milkshake

I've had a bad week. Not just a normal bad week, where you stub your toe and your DVR forgets to record Best Sex Ever or something like that. I mean, a legitimate bad week, where your loved ones are hospitalized and you crash your car into an illegal immigrant while going TO the hospital to visit your loved ones. That kind of bad week: the kind that stays with you for a very, very long time.

Thankfully, there is a mall in my area that is home to both a Chick-fil-A and a Dairy Queen. I was in charge of my son today, and when I'm in charge of my son, I always take him to that mall for Chick-fil-A and Dairy Queen. It's very crucial.

Now, my son doesn't give a shit about anything at the mall except the elevators and escalators. He runs to the elevator and then stays inside it for multiple trips up and down while other people cram in with their strollers and bags of mall shit. He couldn't care less about Chick-fil-A, but I care. I very much care. So I took him to the elevator and dutifully watched him press all the buttons and stand there awkwardly as the doors opened and closed a zillion times. Every trip, I'd ask if we could go to lunch, praying he'd finally get sick of this shit. Finally, he agreed.

So we went to Chick-fil-A and I got my sandwich and then the clerk handed me my bag with a flyer stuck to it that said the following:

BANANA PUDDING MILKSHAKE. LIMITED TIME ONLY.

What? WHAT THE FUCK?! There's a banana pudding milkshake here and I wasn't told in advance? That changed everything. I took my food and sat down with my kid, trying to figure out a way to convince him to come with me back to the Chick-fil-A to get that shake (shakes hold no interest for him). Many times, I thought about flat out abandoning him in the center of the food court to wait in line, but I didn't. But really, would that have been so wrong?

So I sat there and watched my kid eat his lunch, fry by painstaking fry. Seriously, kids take fucking forever to eat. And I'm dying, because the shake is RIGHT FUCKING THERE and I need it. I really do. Every five seconds, I'm like, "Hey kid, you done?" You aren't supposed to rush kids like this, but fuck it. PUDDING SHAKE.

So he finishes and I drag him over to the Chick-fil-A again without washing his hands (fathers never wash kids' hands as often as moms do), and I make him stand there and wait while I order the shake. The clerk grabs a big-ass cup, spoons a shitload of crushed Nilla wafers inside, shoots banana pudding into the cup using a caulking gun (I want that gun), doles out the soft serve, and then spins the fucker up. Then she hands it to me.

People. PEOPLE. Holy, holy shit. Listen: I know there are people out there who boycott Chick-fil-A because they're right-wing extremists or whatever, but I don't give a shit. The clerk could have stabbed an abortion doctor right in front of me and I wouldn't have batted an eyelash. This shake made me so happy. This shake reminded me that life can still be awesome, hospitals or no hospitals. I feel whole again. More than whole, actually. I feel whole, plus an extra 10 pounds (over 100 grams of sugar per serving!). I have no clue why this shake wasn't advertised on the Chick-fil-A menu board, or all over the mall for that matter. I have no clue why the president hasn't scheduled a prime-time televised address to talk to the country about it. It matters.

Nothing you're doing right now is more important than having this shake (and sneaking booze into it if you can). I don't care if you're rescuing a falling child from a burning building. STOP. Get your fucking priorities straight. The Chick-fil-A banana pudding milkshake is IMPORTANT.