Sports is what summer means to men. To women it means what am I going to do with the kids all summer and what bathing suit will make me look thin?
A generation or so ago summer meant women covered their dark furniture with light-colored slipcovers. I wouldn't bother. My furniture gets covered with ice cream drips.
According to some psychologist without enough serious research to do, the popularity of America's favorite treat is due to the need of adult Americans to recapture their childhoods. That's ridiculous. My childhood never escaped.
My childhood evolved with ice cream. I learned how to count money by buying cones at the corner drug store. I figured out the relationship between pints, quarts and gallons in the freezer section of the grocery store. I was rewarded with sundaes for everything from good grades to behaving on long, car trips.
I grew into adulthood with ice cream. I went with college friends for Ben & Jerry's between classes. I wanted Haagen Dazs with my wedding cake. I consoled my sons with Baskin-Robbins when they had chicken pox or scraped their knees.
Ice cream and I have come a long way together and recently we both went natural. I stopped using curlers and hair spray - which saved me money. It stopped using artificial colors and preservatives - which cost me money.
Both ice cream and I have been influenced by fashion. I've grown through full skirts, straight skirts, pleated skirts and mini skirts. Unfortunately, scoops don't have skirts anymore. Skirts were the extra amount that used to be left on the bottom of scoops. Today skirts are rounded off, leaving the scoops nude in public.
Although the majority of summer enthusiasts prefer cones to cups, cups fulfill certain needs. Last weekend I overheard a frustrated father trying to explain to his small son how to lick a cone. The father sounded like a nuclear physicist trying to explain meltdown. Soon it became obvious the child was never going to get in his last licks.
I plan to grow old with ice cream, but the old flavors are getting new names. Chocolate is now "Judge the Fudge", chocolate chip is "Chip Off the Old Block" and vanilla is "Thriller Vanilla". Fine. Ice cream by any other name is still ice cream, but it will be a hot day in hell before I want a dish of "Perrier Sorbet".
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