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You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to ... but frappé?
Cheryl O'Donovan
Updated: August 22, 2012 4:26PM
Rolling home in the vanster, I asked my youngest if he was hungry.
That’s such a foolish question, considering he is male and a teenager.
A pediatrician once prophesied that I would never be able to keep a food supply in the house once my boys turned 14.
So I zipped through the McDonald’s drive-through, steeling myself against temptation, ignoring the delights displayed on the menu: frothy desserts, a specialty burger and Ronald McDonald mainlining fudge.
My son loves those calorie-laden Frappés.
I can so see fitness guru Jillian Michaels baring her teeth as well as her six-pack midriff, her low-rise pants flirting with an NC-17 rating, and Dr. Oz holding up a bathroom scale with the springs falling out.
Fortunately my son burns off calories fast, as he plays a lot of basketball. He’s tall and skinny, two genes he did not inherit from me.
My lineage took its body shape from “I’m a little teapot.”
Now it was our turn and I edged the van forward.
Leaning, I yelled into the drive-through speaker. “One Frap, please!”
“Frap.”
Straight out of the Elly May Clampett handbook.
All I needed was a critter, and the raccoon Kirby chased under the shed was not available.
My mortified youngest shrunk in the passenger seat.
“It’s fra-pay, Mom. Fra-pay.”
He gestured apologetically to the order-taker guy, hand-signing “I was adopted.”
Sheesh. I didn’t know a Frappé from a Parkay.
Sure is true, that if you don’t use it, you lose it. Three years of high school French down the drain. I used to be able to speak a couple of rudimentary sentences, enough to get me slapped at a Paris café. Today I know that “French” is capitalized when applied to “fries.”
Darn good thing I didn’t do
that overseas student exchange program, or I would’ve wound up with the French Foreign Legion with a penciled-on mustache, speaking in a bad Inspector Clouseau accent.
Later in my home office, I Googled how many calories were in a chocolate chip Frappé.
Oooh la lay! Six-hundred and eighty calories in a medium-sized Frappé.
If I consumed one, I’d be a fatté.
