I have a very important message to bring you about Dairy Queen: They’re evil. Evil I tell you. Temptation central. And it’s only compounded by the fact that there are so few of them left in the world.
I’m a very neat eater. I’m not finicky, but I almost never have to use my napkin. I feel like a failure if I have to clean up after myself. I’m prone to eating restaurant french fries with a fork. Yet I have a weakness for Dairy Queen. And not just any kind of Dairy Queen treat—dip cones. Yes, my friends, dip cones. The most vile form of consumable malfeasance known to man. See, it happened like this:
I was out on an afternoon jaunt—nothing really, just a tireless quest to find a real Christian bookstore in Charlotte. I heard that the Family Christian Store had a place in Charlotte, on the southside, and I set out to find it. Only took me about 2 hours driving up and down the same street, searching every shopping center. When I finally found it in the last shopping center on my list, I suddenly realized that it was Sunday, and all good Christian stores are closed on Sunday. I was reminded this by a neat little “Closed” sign on the door at Family Christian. As a result, I am still unaware if there is a real Christian Bookstore in Charlotte. From the outside, it looked disturbingly like your standard taffeta flavored Christian Boutique.
So, there I was, driving off, distraught as could be, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a Dairy Queen. Dairy Queens have dip cones. How could I resist? Immediately, I pulled back into the back access, and drove all the way around to the store. I checked my wallet. Two Dollars. I went in and checked the prices for dip cones. A small was $169.
I knew it was wrong. I knew that Dip Cones were the messiest method humanly possible to consume ice cream. I knew that messy eating was anathema to everything I stand for. Nevertheless, I could not resist. I was weak. So I patiently stood in line, and when it was my turn, I asked that question:
“What flavors of dip cones do you have?” And came the answer:
“We have chocolate, cherry, and butterscotch.”
Butterscotch, the rarest of rarities, barring toffee crunch. The Cheap-o DQ’s I was used to only ever had chocolate.
From here, the events were inevitable.
I bought my Dip Cone, knowing full well that the car I was driving had no power steering, and a tendency to die at stop lights. Knowing full well that I had to make at least two right turns from a full stop to get home. What I didn’t know was that a “small” dip cone at this particular DQ was “only” seven inches tall, including the actual cone. It was raining outside. My clothing didn’t have a chance.
DQ has soft-serve ice cream. Really soft-serve. A Wendy’s Frosty is thicker than a DQ ice cream cone. And Wendy’s is so messy I refuse to ever eat there. I had a drop of ice cream on my pants before I even got in the car.
I set myself straight to work, backing out of my parking space and licking frantically. I cleaned up the between the hard shell of and the cone and started biting down the top. You have to get to the ice cream immediately, or by the time you get through the hard shell, it will all be liquid. But I was too slow. Biting the top caused the shell to , releasing leaks all over the cone. Just as I was pulling on to the highway, I made the bite, and three huge pieces of hard shell broke off. One fell on my shirt, one on my pants, and one flipped up onto my nose and all over my mouth. Each piece had it’s own coterie of thoroughly melted ice cream. I couldn’t do anything about it but to continue merging onto the highway.
The rest of the trip home consisted of attempting to get the cone under sufficient control so that I could reach down and try to salvage the hard shell all over my clothes. I had to eat the remaining pieces of shell that stayed on the ice cream in precisely such a way as to avoid getting another nose-barrage. When I finally go to the hard shell on my shirt, it wasn’t hard any more.
It’s a conspiracy, I tell ya. DQ is out to get me. But I’ll show them. Tomorrow, when I go to Family Christian to apply for a part time job (and if that fails, there was a used bookstore next door), I’m going to sit myself right down and order another dip cone and eat it right there in the store. I’m going to prove that I can eat it without dripping a single drop.
I will not be conquered by nothing more than cream and sugar!!
neumatikos 