Happy Birthday, Mac

I think it cost $.35 the first time I saw one. Since I was from Kansas, I'm sure I saw it somewhere else...we were lucky to have an A&W Root Beer drive-in in my hometown. Anyway, it really is the first memory I have of "fast"food, and it's turning 40: the Big Mac.
Jim Delligatti, a franchise owner in Uniontown, PA, was the first to offer the Big Mac as a menu item back in 1967; within a year, it was nationwide, and now...worldwide. The McDonald's corporation estimates that more than 550 million of the gastronomical disasters are sold each year in the United States alone! Let's see...that's about 17 per second, each weighing in at a hefty half pound. Wow! Do the math with the calories (at 540 a sandwich), and it's not hard to imagine why we have an obesity problem in this country. The popularity is unparalleled. Don't think so? Name one other food item for which you remember the special jingle? "Two all-beef patties...etc" I knew you hadn't forgotten. There's even a "BigMac-aholics" group on Facebook that gets together and spouts eloquent prose (I suspect) dealing with their sublime inFATuation.
It's my suspicion that this is what the Taliban was fighting against all along: not Madonna videos or Victoria's Secret catalog items, or freedom of expression, but the Big Mac. They know that once this food item becomes a staple, their citizenry will be helpless, gladly giving us double the oil output just for a franchise on every corner. It would be too easy...subtle, at first: small storefront, cheap burgers loaded with trans fat and salt. Another outlet, then another...raise the prices, then hit 'em with the Big Mac. A generation later, we're talking about a real bargaining chip. Big Macs for oil...I like it.
For now, Happy Birthday, Big Mac. Even though I cannot remember the last time I ate one, I feel like you've brought us all closer, if only because our stomachs protrude just a bit more as a result of 40 years of celebrating with you.