Name Your Poison

by Cassondra Murray

Is it Rocky Road? Pralines & Cream? Or perchance..Strawberry Cheesecake?

Double Chocolate Chunk or Gold Medal Ribbon?

Sidle up to the bar in the lair and order one. Make it a double (scoop, that is).

Hey, we never said alcohol was the only scandal served at the Bandit Bar.

Ice cream and me, we go way back.

My mom went to church three times a week. Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night prayer meetin'. Most of the time I was forced to attend these three (*cough* boring *cough*) services along with her. But every now and then I'd get a reprieve.

My dad, you see....well...he had no use for church. Never saw him in one. Didn't mean he didn't have faith. Just meant he didn't like church. My mom didn't drive at that time, and my dad would drive her in to the services. So when I was about three, I figured out that on Wednesday nights when we'd head out to prayer meetin', if I begged hard enough, I'd get to stay with my dad instead of going with my mom.

This was a good thing.

What did my dad DO while my mom was in prayer meetin'?

He went to the pool room to shoot pool. And he took me.

First we'd go in, and the regular fellas would all ask me how I was doin'. I'd tell 'em I was doin' fine. Then we'd go up to the counter and I could have a hot dog or a hamburger and a small coke. Then I sat in one of the armchairs on the side of the room right beside the table where my dad would play pool. Now that I'm older, I realize that he put me there so that I was never out of his sight, but I didn't know that then. Then, at age four, this part of my world was good.

I watched while my dad chose a pool stick and proceeded to play. I don't remember whether he won or lost. I was too busy getting an education in male behavior. Now as I look back, I also realize that all those guys straightened up their acts and cleaned up their language just for me. And it was quite a gift, getting to spend prayer meetin' night in the small-town equivalent of the men's club. As I ate my burger and drank my coke, I'd plan what I'd get for dessert. Once my dad hung up his pool stick and we said our goodbyes, we climbed in his truck and drove around the square and down the hill to see his best friend and hunting buddy, Merle.

Merle owned the Dairy Queen.

The Dairy Queen in our town was about the size of a Dixie cup. No lie. It was tiny. About three employees could fit inside and then it was crowded. The DQ was basically a box made of windows, and it set at the bottom of the big hill a block from the town square on Jamestown Street. Yes, the square with the courthouse in the center and the clock on top. It's true. I lived in a cliche.

You had to walk up to the DQ window to order. The thing I remember most clearly was the giant plastic ice cream cone (complete with the fancy little twirl on top) in the window. It was enormous. But it had a seam going up the side. Even at age four, I saw that seam as a dead giveaway. That cone was not real. But what it represented? THAT was real. The perfect cone.

I also recognized the immense skill level necessary to make the "poofs" on the real ice cream cones just above the wafer cups, and then to put that little twisty-twirl right on the top? Not everyone had the gift of the twirl.

You could always tell when they hired new people. The poof was never right. It was lopsided. And new people never added the twirl. Obviously, the twirl was the hardest part of making an ice cream cone. There's one bad thing about working in a box made of windows. Everybody in town gets to see you try--and fail--at making the "ice cream cone twirl".

As I grew older, they stopped adding the twirl. It was a sign, to me, of the lack of ambition and onset of good-for-nothing-ness in the population of teenagers in our town. I mean, really, if you're getting ice cream from DQ, it bloody well ought to have a twirl on top.

I always got a strawberry sundae. I was a tiny little thing at age four. Short for my age, and blonde. (Yes, I was once blonde. Go figure.) And I ate the whole thing. I think that was the beginning of my true love affair with ice cream. By the time I was six, I'd moved on to the banana split. By that point I was an afficianado of soft-serve ice cream.

I have no idea when some angel from God first shoved a bit of ice cream into my mouth, but it had to be a cataclysmic moment. A life was changed. I saw the LIGHT, BABY.

I moved on from that first, unremembered bite, to the developmental stage (sundaes and the banana splits), and finally to the pinnacle of DQ delights....the parfait.

To this day, I still see the light. I've broadened my horizons and I've tried all kinds. But I'm true to my own north star...it guides me back, regularly, to the Baskin Robbins or the DQ.

I love Baskin Robbins many choices of flavors, and their seasonal specialties like eggnog ice cream. Yummmm.

But if it's a banana split I want, nothing will do but Dairy Queen. Nobody does soft-serve like DQ.

I've tried soft-serve at all kinds of places. There's a little "box of windows" in a town near me. It's called the Frosty Freeze. It lures me sometimes, but the ice cream is sort of...well...mealy. It's like you can taste the sugary grit in the ice cream. I'm sorry if I seem judgemental, but...well...it's sub-standard.

Still, I like walking up to the window and ordering from teenagers, just the way the generation before me, and the generation before them, walked up to that same window and ordered from the people who were teenagers then. Maybe that's why I like those places so much. Getting ice cream there makes me a bit of that town's history.

Yes, I've dawdled with the newfangled shops with the marble slabs--the ones that let you watch while they smoosh all kinds of goodies into the scoop of whatever you want and serve it up to you deliciously unfinished and raw....for $5 per scoop.

And yes, I dropped my money on the table and took their ice cream and LOVED IT. But I looked squinty eyed at them as I slurped. Okay it was good. Okay. It was ungodly good. But since it was double the price, when the temptors went the way of all stupidly overpriced places in our town, I was happy to go back to the thirty-onederful flavors at Baskin Robbins, and to my old standby, Dairy Queen.

My banana splits are made in the traditional way. Strawberry, chocolate, and pineapple syrups, no whipped cream, no nuts. Just like the ones I got from Merle's DQ at the bottom of the hill. Nuts are nice and all, but on a banana split? For me, they're just wrong.

I've shot a few games of pool since I sat in that armchair and watched my dad. I suppose it didn't affect me. I suppose it was fate that made me the pool champ at my first two-year college. (Fate and a guy named Glen, who taught me how to slice a ball into the corner and how to cuss like a sailor.)

Ice cream is still a perfect ending to an evening of such debauchery.

Tonight it was a scoop of Nutty Coconut, plus a quart of Strawberry Cheesecake, and one of plain vanilla, so that later, I can make a sundae with fresh strawberries (a gift from some Amish friends--it's strawberry season in Kentucky).

What about you, Bandits and Buddies?

Do you like ice cream? How much?

What would you choose? Let's tally the score.

What kind--hard ice cream (scooped, like Baskin Robbins) or soft-serve?

And what about those hoity toity marble slab places? Do you like those?

But now for the real questions:

What flavor?

What do you like on your banana splits?

Oh, and ....ahem....nuts, or no nuts?

Name your poison.