Mozart McDonald Mondays

I have not yet written an explanation of the title of this blog. It might be kind of obvious. I'm not sure what the exact number of times I've mentioned either classical music or dark chocolate is on here, but I'm sure it's enough to write a very small book, provided that I'm not actually looking to get it published by anyone who actually knows anything about music or chocolate.

One of my best friends from high school and I used to have this tradition for bad days. The philosophy of this is basically that any bad day is a Monday, regardless of where exactly in the week it was. If at the end of the day, you are just ready for it to be over, it is a Monday. 

The origin of the "Mozart McDonald" section is a little more specific. We were lucky to have the professor of piano (Jon Kimura Parker) from Rice University visit our school, and at one point, he played a piece for us that I really love (the second movement of Mozart's 21 piano concerto, for anybody who cares). I told him that he had just played one of my favorite pieces, and the next day when he came back to our school, he gave me a CD of his performance the piece, which was (and still is) one of my favorite recordings. And, if you listen to the piece, you can hear how it is a wonderful way to end bad days. It is just great. So, I was driving around town with my friend, listening to this piece, and I noticed a bag of caramels on her floor.

Now, I will preface this story by saying this blog could easily have been named "Mozart and Caramel." I love caramels. They're delicious. And there was an entire bag in front of me. And I was having a bad day for some reason, so I proceeded to open the bag and my friend and we ate those caramels as if we had a personal vendetta against them, stuffing the empty wrappers into the drink holders. After a while, we got thirsty, so we found a nearby fast food place which happened to be a McDonalds, where we both got drinks, and pulled into a parking lot to get them situated. Here we encountered a problem, because with all of the caramel wrappers stuffed into the drink holders, we couldn't fit our McDonald cups into them. 

It was at this point where we had a moment. 

Those moments where you look up, exchange a look, and suddenly realize how ridiculous you are being. 

We can't fit the McDonald drinks into our car because of the sheer magnitude of leftover caramel wrappers from the last twenty minutes, and we are listening to Mozart.

These moments don't happen often, and they are always over something completely silly, but they somehow make your whole day perfect. Outsiders don't understand your moments. When you are having one of your moments, it is YOUR moment. While you read this post, think about the last time you had one of those days and it somehow ended with you falling over laughing, or with you suddenly feeling randomly happy for no ostensible reason. If you were with a friend, perhaps the friend felt it as well, but it is something that is very difficult to explain to anybody else, at least in detail.

That was how that day ended for me, and where a Mozart McDonald Monday (or M3 for short) comes from. It's one of those days that seems to go wrong in every way, and then all of a sudden, you find your moment in something small and ridiculous, and everything suddenly becomes okay and laughable or insignificant. Because in the end, it's just one day.

And in the meantime, there is no shortage of Mozart. Or chocolate.