The Perils of Fast Food

Dave went on a cross-country this weekend (another one). Yes, my husband left me all alone on Valentine's Day :(. Anyways, since it was just me and the boys, I decided to take them to McDonald's after church for a little treat. I got to drink my coffee and read the paper while they played. Perfect.
They had a great time, running around and climbing. I was keeping an eye on them as I perused the local news. Well, first of all, Luke insisted on carrying around his blankie. Unfortunately, he likes to hold it by one corner, so it drags around all over the ground as he walks. Kind of gross, I know. (That blankie has been washed so many times in the last month...) I watched Luke run over to the video game machine (Really, why do they have these??? As if the fast food isn't enough, now your kids can go eat crap and play video games at the same time. I like McDonalds because they can go run around and play. I certainly don't want them sitting and staring at a screen. But, I digress...) So, next thing I see is Luke climbing under a table and kind of patting the underside of the table. I turned back to my story, then looked up again to find Luke eating something. Great, I thought, he found somebody's left over french fry on the floor and is eating it. Not too surprising for my kid, but still disgusting. I went over to remove the offending food. As I got closer, Luke gave me a silly little grin. I held out my hand and ordered Luke to spit. He spit, but nothing came out. That's when a flash of color under the table caught my eye. It was worse than I thought. Luke found somebody's chewed up gum stuck to the bottom of a table, pulled a small piece off, and was happily chewing away!! The worst part was, it was stuck to his teeth, so I had to stick my hand in there and pull it off. Talk about yuck. I just hope that gum had been there long enough for all germs and bacteria and anything else that might have been living on it to die. At this rate, Luke is going to have a fantastic immune system.