Texas is a heinous place. Its family values obsessed, abysmally closed-minded culture made for a rather painful childhood for me. Our yearly school field trip was to the Petroleum Museum, and in high school, one of my teachers told us that China wasn't allowed in the United Nations because it is communist. Indeed, the average IQ of Texas is that of the average D.C. resident's big toe, as evidenced by the fact that we produced the likes of George W. Bush and Anna Nicole Smith. (Britney Spears is, thankfully, from Louisiana.)
However, what Texas lacks in culture and smarts, it makes up for greasy, delicious, readily available fast-food. Despite the low wattage upstairs, Texans did manage to get something right: There is at least one Dairy Queen in every town. So three years after coming to college here, I still can't quite understand why intelligent, innovative, cosmopolitan D.C., with its restaurants and entertainment catering to virtually every taste, can't understand the importance of simple down-home pleasures. This is a city where you can get a four-course fondue meal made at your table, eat Amer-Asian food inside of a giant bird cage, scoop up globby bits of Ethiopian food with spongy bread and enjoy other culinary oddities that can only appeal to a people so jaded that even their food has to be edgy and obscure. Not that the aforementioned aren't great, but when it comes to getting delicious chicken nuggets for a dollar, D.C. fails miserably.
Freshman year, we bemoaned the vast void that was D.C.'s lackluster fast food options. We fantasized about Blizzards and Taco Bell quesadillas; we reminisced about the eclectic yet reasonably priced menu at Denny's. I had friends who would screech across three lanes of traffic to pull over at a Wawa and buy coffee. Coffee like Wawa's, they say, you just can't get in D.C. I, on the other hand, beeline immediately for the nearest Sonic any time I dip below the Mason-Dixon Line, hoping that by drinking five cream pie shakes in a row, I won't crave them for the rest of the year.
But after three years and a realization that a political science major can't very well live in the boonies of Arkansas two blocks from a Steak and Shake, I've learned to adjust to sparse availability of the food I grew up on. After a night of merriment with friends, I settle for the far inferior and grease-caked Steak and Egg in lieu of my beloved IHOP, the nearest of which is in Alexandria. My gynecologist is horribly out of the way, yet I continue to go to her because her office is on top of a Wendy's, the only one I've seen in D.C. thus far.
There are many theories as to why this phenomenon persists. It's possible that D.C. children, brought up by soy latte-drinking moms who shop at Whole Foods and drive hybrid vehicles, never experience the caloric joys of the fast-food realm, and therefore never develop into consumers that demand such fare. It could be that D.C.'s social climate causes residents to always project a powerful, well-groomed image that just doesn't mesh well with slurping a blue slushy from a Styrofoam cup while dipping chicken fingers into gravy. Whatever the reason, we could do with a little less of the exotic and trendy and a little more of the comfortable and convenient. Maybe someone could pave one of D.C.'s 800,000 Starbucks and put up a Wawa, so instead of $4.50, your morning choca-mocha-frapo-whatever-beverage would run about $2.25 and be twice as big. And, since fast-food joints are usually open 24 hours, we wouldn't have to settle for the banality that is McDonald's to satiate our drunk munchies. Besides, the best way to fight the war on obesity is to get behind enemy lines and attack that double bacon cheeseburger.
Olga Khazan is a senior in the School of Public Affairs and a social commentary columnist for The Eagle.
