life is like a giant bowl of ice cream... i suppose.

I've always had idealistic suspicions about the manner in which I would eventually plan my formidable attack on life. These are most easily described through a metaphor using ice cream (at least it is in my head).

My honest desire, which I imagine would lead to something like fulfillment or satisfaction, would be to attack life sternly, with tactical dexterity and skill... oh yeah, the ice cream thing...  I see my successful self opening a half gallon ice cream thing (or however big they are... I don't pay attention to these things) with a strong, tanned hand holding a very clean, particularly chosen spoon, as though I had spent years eating half bowls of ice cream in search of the perfect tool. I would quietly and suddenly, without any hesitation or pre-game warm-up or locker-room ritual, carve into the exact center of the chocolate ice cream which contains a long list of ingredients and chocolated/nutted/marshmallowed nuggets of awesomeness and occasional disappointment. My hand would know exactly the pressure and angle which the spoon would need to take just the right amount of goodness from the whole. These carvings would cleanly hollow a hole through the creamy dessert at a perfect 90-degree angle, leaving only smooth edges (and I know what you're saying: this should be impossible with all those awesome-nuggets in there which should undoubtedly cause rips and tears in the sidewalls... but come on, I would have mastered that, like, 6 years ago while searching for this spoon... keep up).

All the way to the bottom of the carton my spoon would take my hand, leaving a silver-dollar sized disc of perfect white for my calm, rarely blinking eye under my calm, sweat-free brow to enjoy in pride-free, stoic satisfaction... From this perfect disc, my hand would guide the tip of the spoon outward in an angled, circular motion, excavating the goodness from within, luring perfect shavings of awesome-speckleded ice cream up the arm of the spoon and into the daylight.

 My spoon would find the edges of the carton. Free from sunlight and from anyone's view, it would continue draw out the perfection from a place where no spoon had ever ventured, providing a plethora of necessity unmatched since Mary Poppins' purse (only this is ice cream and brownie bits -- much better than umbrellas and medicine). Eventually, to the onlookers who had gathered to see the skillful approach to this life/icecream, but exactly on time to my mind's and hand's and spoon's calculation, the top shelf of the concoction would slide about 5 inches to rest perfectly on the bottom of the carton. Then I'd eat it from the top down: a perfect amount of ice cream for one serving; for breakfast; on a Tuesday.

"Why didn't you just scoop that much out from the top with this ice cream scooper" a few ice cream eating columnists and critics would ask, shoving their bulky microphones over some nice people's shoulders.

"Because you and your neighbor probably do it that way" I would say with some sense of knowledge and no hint of smugness.


But the reality is, that if I tried to eat ice cream this way -- which I have -- I would immediately fail due to the following (and more that I don't feel like thinking of) reasons:

1. there is no perfect spoon... at least not of yet

2. there's just not a way to keep the nuts and brownie bits and marshmallows and everything from tearing at the newly formed surfaces of the icecream as you slice through it.... there just isn't.

3. you'd have to eventually pause to curve your spoon to physically scoop from inside out

4. it's just ice cream, so it doesn't matter how you scoop it. just eat it and try not to hate yourself an hour later.

5. your knuckles would get way to ice-creamy: no surgeon's hand can provide that much dexterity and still be clean enough to fold white t-shirts.

All this to say, when I eat ice cream, I attempt this with the first scoop about 80% of the time, and I've done so since I was about 7 years old. With my immediate failure comes immediate remorse, followed quickly by immediate excitement, because I'm about to eat ice cream. When I finish my scooping, I generally feel a sense of brief shame, because I've failed once again. So, if nobody's looking, and if I have enough time before the commercial is over in the next room, I use the bottom side of the spoon (I hate ice cream scoopers, and I see about as much use in them as I see in tandem bicycles) to smooth out the top of the new surface of the ice cream; sometimes I smash it into as perfect of a flat, 180-degree plot as possible, and sometimes I embrace the new mountain range of sugar and cream I created, and I choose to smooth out the erosion into slick rolling hills.

To this day, I've not found spoons better for this guilt-ridden therapy than those which belonged to my maternal grandparents. My grandfather died just before my first daughter was born, and my grandmother was just very recently moved into a home near her wonderful daughter, but she wouldn't be able to tell you that, seeing as how she's a little wrapped up with staring Alzheimer's right in it's beady little bastard eyes.

I have some of those spoons now, mostly as a result of them just needing someone to look after them. I figured it might as well be a next-of-kin.


We all have dreams at one time or another. Sometimes they come true, but I really don't think that matters.

A very few of us have a few people in our lives that we can honestly say we love and are loved by. Even fewer of us have those who amount to more than we can count on our hands and feet. I'm pretty sure I'm in the second group... but I'm really no good with numbers.

To everybody else: quit being mean to people. They're just people with problems like yours. And you're just a person with problems like mine (goo goo ga joob). Quit buying so much stuff and give somebody a hug, or at least a damn smile.... you'll find it's very easy to fold a white t-shirt afterward.