The sign on the wall

Only KFC has so much tasty chicken, fresh from our kitchens, just for you.

Yesterday my wife caught me staring at the above words on a sign in a KFC restaurant in Georgia. Other husbands might get caught staring at other women. I get caught staring at signs. What, I wondered as I focused on the sign, is the point of that sentence?

The line makes a claim about both quantity and quality, yet I noticed that KFC places its emphasis on quantity. The company seems less proud that its chicken is tasty than that it has so much of it. They may not have the tastiest chicken -- at least the sign on the restaurant wall makes no such claim -- but at least they have more of it than anybody else.

The line also seems to be saying that it has more tasty chicken in its kitchens than anybody else does. It made me wonder: Why would anybody else have any chicken in KFC kitchens? Don't Chick-fil-A, Popeye's and Church's Chicken have their own kitchens?

Finally there is the sentence's final phrase: "just for you." As for me, I can rarely eat more than two pieces of chicken at one sitting, so I am less interested in quantity than quality. I just want my chicken to taste good. The irony of that bold statement on the KFC wall, claiming that it has more chicken than any of its competitors, is that while I had ordered two thighs in my two-piece meal, this Georgia restaurant had just one thigh ready in its kitchen. I was given a breast instead.

On the drive down from Ohio, from winter into summer, I had been thinking about my two grandchildren, ages 12 and 9, and about their respective talents and abilities. I wondered what kind of futures they may have, what kind of careers may lie ahead for them. My granddaughter, like her grandfather, loves to read and write. People with her skills, I should think, will always be in demand. KFC might even be able to use her right now.