Originally published Sept. 14, 2008
By Susan Lampert Smith
Is there something about junk food that brings out the obsessiveness? I only ask because, right in time for the 40th birthday of the Big Mac, word comes from our friends at the Fond du Lac Reporter that local resident Don Gorske has now eaten more than 23,000 Big Macs since he started gobbling them one a day in May 1972.
Now, I got a little sick of Don, or maybe sick from thinking about what his insides must look like, because my media pals would write about him at nearly every burger milestone. Frankly, I was waiting for his obituary, which would like show clogging of the ateries as a cause.
But now, finally, comes the reason he has not only eaten a burger a day, but also saved every burger receipt in a box. Gorske told the newspaper he has obsessive complusive disorder, and that his addiction springs as much from a love of counting things as a desire for greasy burger. He keeps all his receipts, too. Apparently, those numbers on the sign that track how many burgers McDonald's has served inspired him to count his own consumption.
Now, I could make fun of this except for this: Two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-on-a-sesame-seed-bun.
What's that? It's a McDonald's Big Mac jingle from the 1970s, and it's still stuck in my head. Back then, if you went to a McDonald's, and could recite the ingredient jingle, you got a free Big Mac. I did it. And it was so long ago that there wasn't even a McDonald's in Fort Atkinson -- Imagine, a town too small for McDonald's! -- so we had to travel to Whitewater to sing the song and get the free burger. The weird thing is that I haven't had more than a few Big Macs in my life, and none in the last decade, yet the jingle will likely be with me until death.
So look down on Don Gorske and his burger madness, if you like, but remember that there's probably a crazed Hamburglar hiding out in every one of us.
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