Abandoning Wife And Kids To Visit McDonald’s In Every Foreign Country Not As Satisfying As Man Expected

YICHANG, CHINA—Feeling an unfamiliar tinge of emptiness midway through his 117-nation excursion, Indiana resident Larry Hough reported Wednesday that abandoning his family back in Fort Wayne in order to visit a McDonald’s in every foreign country was not as satisfying an endeavor as he had imagined. “Huh, is it possible I just built up the excitement of trying marginally different McDonald’s items in my head, and it’s maybe not all it’s cracked up to be?” said the 53-year-old father, who wordlessly booked a one-way plane ticket to Australia in 2019, leaving a wife, four kids, and ailing mother behind to follow his dream of experiencing the fast food chain’s locations abroad. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s incredibly cool to see just how similar a McDonald’s in, say, São Paulo or Johannesburg can be to the ones back home, but somehow it hasn’t completely erased all lingering memories of my loved ones the way I thought it would. The first 30 visits or so were absolutely exhilarating, but by this point I feel like I’m just going through the motions of marveling at how many different names they have for a hamburger across various Pacific archipelagos. Now it almost seems like a family who loves me unconditionally could potentially offer more fulfillment than something called Sausage N’ Egg Twisty Pasta. They have those in Hong Kong, by the way, and they’re fucking awesome.” At press time, Hough had reportedly snapped out of his temporary homesickness after eating his Chicken and Pickled Bamboo Shoots Wrap and realizing he had just been hungry.