My Best Ice Cream Experience

I think back to my childhood.  Those summer days.  Hot. Carefree. BBQ smells everywhere you turn. Sweetcorn, soda and ice cream in every kids hands as we celebrated the freedom from school.  Baseball cards in spokes, shorts, laughter and big league chew bubble gum.  Even now. I still can feel the emotion from being a child in small town Iowa.

As I think of some of my favorite moments.  I can't help be but be tempted to my best ice cream experience.
It was a minicup.  I was at Casey's General Store.  I believe it was .35 and it was all the money I had.  After dumping pennies, nickles and a dime on the table, I sheepishly said thank you as my mind started to wander and dream of how my VERY own, paid for by yours truly ice cream would taste.

It took me a week of chores and literally digging through every nook and crevice in my small town to come up with that much money.  But I did it.

So there I am.  Sitting on the curb of Casey's.  The yellow stripe of the curb acting as sofa cushion. The only sounds I could hear were my Topp's card as my bicycle wheel spun and the shredding of the lid as I tore it off.

*Silence* My first bite.  So cold.  So.... NOT good!  It really was kinda awful. It wasn't soft and their were ice crystals which now tells me that it had been in the freezer a while. I chose vanilla with chocolate swirls, but I couldn't distinguish either no matter how hard I tried.  My first memorable ice cream experience was and will always be a bust;  yet it is the best ice cream experience I've ever had.

As an adult.  It's funny, when I eat foods like milk shakes, ice cream cones and blizzards all in an effort to take me back to that day.  That non-glorious, but inspiring day.  I think because it's not always about how good the food is that I'm eating.  But often, the reason I'm there.  Or the people I'm with. In reality.  My tastes buds don't make my memories, my symbolic heart does.