The Cleveland Clinic is finally trying to evict McDonalds. I remember that place. Some years back, Alane's mother had bypass surgery there. (At Cleveland Clinic, not at its McDonalds.)

We were all camped out in the family waiting area for the six or eight hours that the surgery would take. After a while of that, one tends to get hungry.

We walked through what seemed like dozens of buildings and found the food counters. Yeah, I was a little surprised to see a McDonalds. And more surprised to see what was featured on the menu.

It wasn't a double cheeseburger (those have a long history, though I'm not sure they're still offered).

It wasn't a triple cheeseburger (though I think those too were widely available for some time).

It was a quadruple cheeseburger, offered as a limited-run market-test.

It was called The Big and Cheesy.

I had to have one. I purchased one and brought it back to the waiting area. So, with my mother-in-law upstairs with her ribs cracked open, my father-in-law sitting across from me sweating bullets, and my brother-in-law Joe at the next table reading from a stack of law books, I tucked into that greasy pile.

Big and Cheesy indeed!

Yes, I was fully aware of the irony. Joe looked up from his books from time to time to stare at me, disgusted. If there's an Internet connection in the Great Beyond and he's reading this post, he's probably muttering: "You ate that crap, and it was my heart that wound up giving out."

That would be fair criticism.

Alas, the Big and Cheesy didn't play outside Peoria. After that day, I never saw it again on any menu (though I did see a McKroket at an Amsterdam McDonalds -- unrelated but just as strange).

BTW, so nobody gets the wrong idea Mojo Gamer and/or our parenting skills: those computer games are all education. "Clifford." "I Spy." Mojo knows how to build a skyscraper in the "Tonka Construction" program. (Though I think last night he was playing "Grand Theft Matchbox.")