Floyd Kelly

It started as a perfectly ordinary afternoon in Orlando. A certain mischievous figure was in the mood to shake things up, so he decided to test the limits of the fast-food drive-thru system. It was all for science; he probably told himself.

He pulled into McDonald’s drive-thru, and when the cheery voice crackled through the speaker with a “Welcome to McDonald’s, can I take your order?” he leaned out and confidently said, “Yeah, I’ll take a Taco Bell Crunch wrap Supreme and two chalupas. Extra Diablo sauce.”

There was silence on the other end, followed by a cautious, “Um, sir, we’re McDonald’s.”

“I know,” he said, a giggle. “So… no Crunch wraps?”

Supposedly, the employee whispered, “It’s him again.”, then loudly snickering. “Please pull forward.”

He drove off without picking up his imaginary order and headed straight for Burger King. This time, he ordered a Protein Free GMO Chicken Salad. The guy at the speaker hesitated before saying, “This is Burger King sir. We don’t sell… that.”

“That’s disappointing,” he yelled into the speaker, feigning outrage. Speeding off with loud laughs.

He knew he was running on borrowed time. He had just reached the Taco Bell drive-thru when he spotted the familiar police car pulling into the parking lot. He turned the volume down on Katy Perry, played it cool and placed an actual Taco Bell order. As he inched toward the pick-up window, Officer Banks stepped out, hands on his hips, a look of both memory and weariness on his face.

“Rumpelstiltskin!” the officer yelled, forgoing any other greeting. “Ordering phantom Crunch wraps again? We’ve gotten three complaints. Don’t you have better things to do?”

Rumpelstiltskin beamed, the picture of innocence. “Who, me? I’m just here for a Gordita.”

The officer pointed a thumb toward the van. “And what’s with all the new bobble heads all over your dashboard?”

“Oh, those? Lucky charms. Totally unrelated.”

Before Officer Banks could get another word in, the Taco Bell employee nervously handed the food through the window.

The officer just pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just… go home, Rumpelstiltskin. Go home.”

With a grin and a cheerful wave, the trickster pulled away, the officer getting smaller in his rear-view mirror. With a flick of his finger at a bobble head, he snickered, “Oh, I’m just getting started!”