This essay was originally posted to my blog in early June of 2014, and I’m re-posting it (with an update to the text of course) since I will be ending my tenure at the restaurant where I’ve worked very soon. Being there has been a good experience, but I like to think, “The only constant in life is change.”  and it’s time to move on.

Word Count: 1125

You Scream, I Scream,

Why not Scream for Ice Cream

Some people may find this hard to believe, but I’ve liked working the ice cream section at my restaurant job. Not quite as much fun as when something I’m writing falls into place perfectly, or the exhilaration I get from skiing down a mountain in knee deep powder, but it does have the distinction of ranking right up there in terms of jobs. You may be asking yourself, wait a second-isn’t the job of scooping ice cream analogous to that of digging ditches or inspecting hole placement at a donut factory? Yes, in certain situations it is, but hear me out on this one; over the past eight summers I’ve grown to enjoy the simple act of scooping ice cream.

Always an interesting experience while I’m doing it, and the pros far out weigh the cons. Let’s list the pros, shall we?

1.   First and foremost, when people come to get ice cream from us they’re generally in a pretty good mood. After all, they’re on        vacation so that has a lot to do with them being happy, upbeat, and for the most part walking around with a nice smile on their face. As with everything in life there are exceptions of course, but this group of curmudgeons with the perpetually grumpy outlook and feelings that life has been so unfair to them are few and far between. We’ll ignore them and concentrate on serving the folks in a positive frame of mind instead.

2. During the height of the season we like to keep the freezers full to the brim with over twenty-four different flavors of the stuff. I’m not sure what it is about having such a wide variety of the sugary confection on hand, but all those choices give folks lots of options and its fun just watching people decide what type of ice cream they’re about to reward themselves with.
3. All those choices brings up my next reason I’ve liked serving the stuff. Just figuring out new and innovative ways to write the flavors on our caulk board is always an interesting challenge. Who knew I’d come to enjoy working up different color combinations and squeezing words and letters into a smaller and smaller space? Lettering never really appealed to me in Cartoon Art School, but in this situation, it seems to have done the trick.
4. We’re increasingly serving tourists from all different parts of the world. This includes lots of folks from Latin America and Spain. Another opportunity for me to practice speaking the lingua franca of those parts of the planet? You bet. Making a fool of myself has never been an obstacle for a linguistically challenged individual such as myself, so usually I’m never hesitant to just jump right in with my limited Spanish language skills. “Limited” being the operative word in this case.

I could practice the few words of Swahili I still remember from my time in Kenya, but that was thirty-four years ago and most of the utterances I still recall are cuss words. Not too much call for those. Come to think of it, there isn’t too much call for speaking Swahili in general around here. Why is that?

5. It is such a kick serving kids. Just watching them decide upon the ice cream of their choice is such a hoot. They generally go for the standards (“Vanilla”, “Chocolate”), but exotic flavors are also popular (“Bubblegum”, “Cotton Candy”, “Superman”-you know-the stuff with lots of colors, and as I like to tell the parents, basically 98% sugar.

Then when I ask the kid if they want their dessert in a cup or cone, watching the ensuing argument take place with their parental units is quite the treat as well. A family comedy unfolding before my very eyes. Most of the time the kid demands their ice cream be served to them in a cone. Mother or father wants it served to them in a cup for cleanliness purposes. Grandparent eyes roll and the kid begrudgingly accepts their fate. Usually I compromise by serving it to them in a cup and sticking a cone on top. This atonement gesture on my part generally works, but sometimes the kid still can’t get no satisfaction (Mick, Keith, and the rest of the Rolling Stoneswere basically right).

Often the kid wants a topping as well, and most of the time its sprinkles. They like them so much that I actually experienced a day where the youngster asked me for just sprinkles and no ice cream. In the original incarnation of this essay, I speculated that this “exclusive sprinkles scenario”would play itself out one day, and right after the Chicago Cubswin the World Series. Low and behold, the Cubs did indeed win the Fall Baseball classic in 2016, and the very next summer the selective sprinkle incident happened. Fact is indeed stranger than fiction in this situation.

I generally consider myself a fairly happy person. Every once in awhile I do get upset and this generally has to do with me feeling some sort of injustice has been foisted upon a person. That, or having to deal with differences of opinion. Both politically, and religiously. In the ice cream serving case, I always tell the person with a viewpoint different from mine that we shouldn’t discuss these topics in a public forum. Works beautifully to end the conversation before it even gets started, and I’m convinced the opposing viewpoint individual walks away with the usual perpetual frown on their face, and in total disgust since they can’t stand on their soap box and spout their opinions to me.

In the past few years, I’ve developed and nurtured another way of dealing with the sheer boredom of the job. I took a writing workshop fifteen years ago while living in Telluride where the workshop mentor told us there are basically two ways to practice your craft; 1. Soft Writing– Situations where you’re thinking about what you’re presently working on while vacuuming the floor, washing dishes, or in this case, scooping ice cream.  How you’re going to put the words together, what type of sentences you’re going to write down on the page, plot structure, word placement, etc., etc.. 2. Hard Writing– Those situations where you’re sitting at the computer and doing the actual writing. Scooping the Ice Cream has provided me with lots of Soft Time Writing situations.

Now working the ice cream section hasn’t put me in the upper echelon tax bracket during the time I’ve been doing it, but it’s never failed to provide me with a pleasant working atmosphere. That in itself is why I’ve liked scooping the stuff.