On Ice Cream and Prehistoric Reptiles

I was frustrated. It was hot and the middle of the week, and there was no end in sight.

Only one thing cut through the haze: Ice cream.

It didn't seem too towering a request. This is, after all, a resort town, and in resort towns, ice cream flows in the same proportion as Bud Light does in a college town. So I weighed my options. There was the retro place down by the lake...too many screaming brats in the line. Then there was the frozen yogurt joint down the road....yogurt? Pshaw. I decided, after much pondering, on Byrne Dairy, which has been milking cows since 1933.

The place, which doubles as a convenience store, was loaded with celebratory kids (school ended yesterday) and tanned worker types buying cases of Coors. I saddled up to the ice cream counter to place my meager order.

Me: Can I have a small hot fudge malt?
Ice Cream Girl: Uh, like, a shake? (quizzical look)
Me: Uh, sure, whatever
ICG: And what do you mean, like put hot fudge in a shake?
Me: Uh, yeah.
ICG: (after consult with cigarette clerk) Oh, we can't do that.
Me: Fine, a chocolate shake is fine.

So she passed over the long-lusted-after dessert I didn't really order, and I paid. Then I took a sip.

Uh.

And one more, just to be sure.

Yep, it was disgusting. Gross, maybe, is more accurate. Or just plain bad. It had the consistency of slightly frozen milk, the flavor of chalk, and the distinct honor of being so exquisitely boring, I couldn't stomach it.

I tossed it, barely drunk, atop a pile of shingles in a dumpster.

When it comes to ice cream, I can stomach very nearly anything. In fact, on summer vacations as a kid, I convinced my parents to fill my mini hands with an ice cream cone each and every day. More often than not, the cones came after days spent excavating dinosaur bones in South Dakota or Utah. Along with the bones, we would find gastroliths, rocks polished over years spent in the bellies of the beasts. Some dinosaurs, apparently, would swallow the stones to help break down tough plants. Long after T-Rex croaked, these remnants remain, with all the shine of sea glass.

The fact they got that way thanks to dino-sized stomach acid only makes them more appealing.

So one cloudless day, we were traversing the barren desert per usual when, in a stroke of genius, I proclaimed my own digestive deficiency. Like the dinosaurs before me, I, too, needed digestive assistance. But stones wouldn't do for a little girl sunburned like a Red Snapper. I needed ice cream.

My ice cream stones kept everything copasetic that summer, and many summers after. Until my fated failure in Canandaigua, of course. The not-a-malt was disappointing, to be sure. But when a critical bearer of life functioning fails, I can't just give up. So back I will go into the realm of the iced unknown. Unlike my scaley friends, I'm not waiting for extinction to prove the importance of a well-stoned diet.