Ice Cream for the World: It Started Simple Enough

It started simple enough.  Marci and I were sick.  We had just finished watching Forest Gump.  I had commented that as good as that last thought of the last scene of the movies was, when Forest says—

 

 “I don’t know if it’s Mamma that’s right, or if it’s Lieutenant Dan; I don’t know if we each have a destiny or if we’re all just floating accidental like we’re floating on a breeze, but I think maybe it’s both; maybe both can happen at the same time”

 

—I said that as good as that thought was, it was an intrusive narrator speaking, not Forest. 

 

I then asked my son Everest to bring me a dish of ice cream.  He resisted, saying among other things that dairy isn’t good for you when you have a cold.  I prevailed, reminding him of all the many times I made dinner for him, hinting that it could all come to an end if he were not forthcoming with the ice cream.  All he had to do was dish it up.  I would crunch the sugar-free chocolate and strawberry wafers on it myself.

 

I did prevail.  And oh that ice cream felt so good against my sore, raw throat.  That’s when a thought formed in my mind, so simple, so clear, it could almost be pure religion—inspiration untainted by the ways of the world.

 

“You know, if this was it, if this was all there is, to come to earth, to get a body, to taste ice cream, I mean really taste ice cream, I think it would be all worth it.”

 

“Maybe you should start a charity,” said Marci.  “Take ice cream to those who never had it.”

 

“Ice cream for the children in Ethiopia,” said Everest.

 

They were joking, of course, making fun of me.

 

But I knew then and there, no matter how much I hated dipping ice cream at Braum’s after school, as a teenager growing up in Texas, I had just found my true calling.

 

I went to the restroom as I also had diarrhea and I Googled “ice cream trucks for sale” on my I-Phone.  It wasn’t easy.  My I-Phone is my enemy, but I did it.

 

At first I found a fleece blanket, “Ice Cream Truck” byAngie Turner, $74.99 on Wayfair.

 

That was pretty cool, but not what I needed.