When Ice Cream is Bad for Me

When Ice Cream is Bad for Me

My mother told me just this morning that ice cream is bad for me.  Well, you know I’m going to fight that with:  “define bad.”  Is it an irritant of some sort?  I think not.  Over time, could it cause conditions that make me ill?  Hear me out, and judge for yourself.

So tonight I went out to eat dinner because my previous plan to go gamble with a very good friend and very small amount of money fell apart.  I drifted toward a favorite restaurant, parked my car and proceeded onward only to find someone dropped a $20 next to my vehicle.  My first thought, which was rooted deeply in my more base nature was:  “YES.  Finders, keepers; losers, weepers.”  Then I walked into the restaurant only to find it jam-packed with car enthusiasts.  Someone had asked me last week if I was going to the “Nationals” this weekend and I asked, “National what’s?”  It was really getting to my cranky zone of needing to eat and I did not want to sit around and wait for a table for one, so I spun on my heel and went back to my car.  And then it hit me.  The $20 still in my pocket was talking to me. 

The vehicle next to me was a Lincoln from out of state.  The bill in my pocket was folded in half twice.  It didn’t seem dusty like it blew across the lot; it didn’t seem rained on like it had been on the ground for a while.  And technically it was not mine.  So I came up with a solution:  random act of kindness - I put it on the windshield wiper of the Lincoln.  If it was his, he will feel shocked that it was there.  If it wasn’t his, he will think that people in Central New York are the nicest people on the planet.  I feel good about that.  Although, frankly, I would have liked the $20 myself but I will get over it.  Sometimes becoming a decent human being takes some work.  And maybe someone will leave money on my windshield some day.  Well, I can dream.

I drove onward to the next restaurant of choice.  Happily when I walked in I was not greeted with my all-time favorite restaurant hostess faux pas of:  “Just one?”  because some day I am going to explain that I am in no way, shape or form, “just one.”  I am enough trouble to be five or six of me on some days.  And I also will articulate that the word “just” is a belittling term that really could hurt a person’s feelings if they had any to start with.  Just greet me and seat me and we will all get along nicely.

The wait staff took me to the back of the restaurant and for a brief second I thought it would be a quiet dinner.  Wrong-ola.  The table next to me was a little girl, her mother, and her grandmother teaching the baby in the high chair to talk.  I’m good with that because it wasn’t screaming.  It was kind of cute.

Then these two guys walked in.  Frankly, at first glance I thought they might be “a couple.”  Boy was I about to get my sights re-adjusted.  I wish I could see the one who sat with his back to me.  I would like to know if he looked dumb.  I say that because he was getting a tutorial that only dumb people – or very desperate men – would tolerate.  I only actually saw one of the guys before they sat down.  The one that I saw, who left me with an odd first impression, began to “school” the other guy on “getting women.”  (I am thinking I don’t want to know what happens after the capture.)

A younger waitress came over to get them situated and provide them with an initial beverage.  The guy with his back to me began chit-chatting with her in a very friendly way asking her a bit about herself.  At the point she said, “I have two children,” he had to re-group and figure out if that meant she was committed to someone else or not.  I am not reading into this.  When she walked away from the table, the other guy, let’s call him “Coach,” began interpreting the interface.  Coach told him, “She is cute.  She was friendly to you.  She likes you.”

I wanted to comment over my shoulder, “You’re a self-absorbed idiot.  She is just being a friendly waitress to get a good tip.” 

Coach started talking about how he’s met so many girls in the past few weeks and they were all hot and yada, yada, yada.  Then he kind of switched gears and mentioned it was hard for him being single again and in midlife.  No, buddy, that has nothing to do with it.  It’s just that you are obviously a jerk.

The other guy, let’s call him Vic (short for Victim of Bad Advice), seemed like he was trying to learn how to be friendly with women, but was low on long-term confidence.  The thing that Coach was trying to do was to really get him to be like him.  Which begs the questions, “IF Coach is such a stellar expert on women, why is he sitting in this dinky restaurant trying to get this other guy on board his train?  Why isn’t he out on a date with these women that seem to find him so irresistible?”  I propose to you that they don’t exist.

A woman who knew Coach walked up to the table with a small child.  She greeted him and then went on her way to her table.  After she left, Coach mentioned what town she was from and told Vic that she has always been hot, even as she aged.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME????!!!!  If that woman knew you interpreted her that way, I hope she’d at least give you a good old fashioned slap in the face.  The reason why Coach isn’t going to find any lasting relationship is probably because, given the way he interprets women, and what his plans seem to be, he thinks of them only in a way that suits his own need for visual entertainment and/or recreational purposes.

Women are people.  Women have intelligence, thoughtfulness, feelings, and are an incredible blessing to men who know how to treat them with the respect they deserve.  Studies have shown that married men live longer than single men.  You can take that one step further and marvel that most men who are married may have life insurance policies that might make it worth them not living as long…. So they should feel damn lucky to find a woman who can appreciate whatever it is that they bring into a relationship.  

What Coach never told Vic … probably because he is too bleeping shallow to know it is this:  the one thing women find across-the-board, 100% attractive is KINDNESS.  You can be a guy who never saw the inside of a gym his whole life, but if you are Kind, you have shoe-in.  Coach mentioned a movie where a guy took his shirt off and “even though the actor was middle-aged, he still looked good”…. whatever that means.  Because I can tell you that when you say the two words “Sean Connery,” women are initially not thinking about him taking off his shirt.  Almost universally, Sean Connery has won females on one quality alone:  he portrays a man who is deeply kind or brave in the movies.  When he played King Arthur in Camelot, his appeal was strictly in that his character was so incredibly noble.  The beard didn’t hurt, but it was mostly his nobility.  

I will give you another tip that Vic could have used:  Go walk a friendly dog in the park somewhere.  If you are going to put any kind of effort into the attraction process, knock yourself out with the dog as your spokesman.  Get a Pomeranian, teach it that when you say, “Let’s go for ice cream!” it will leap up into your arms.  I think you could pretty much end up buying any single woman an ice cream as well after that stunt.  Women trust men that dogs trust.  I propose that it is mostly because dogs are excellent judges of character at first whiff.  They know “weasel” in 30 seconds or less. 

And finally, take a tip from the Book of Madeline, my little brown cocker spaniel.  All she has to do is sit there and look at me with those big brown eyes as if to say, “And what would you like today?”  and she has my heart all mushy.  When she goes out into the yard with her own dog instincts and decides to roll in bunny poo to make herself more “attractive,” it just backfires.  In fact, it is nauseating.

I asked the waitress for my ice cream to go.  I couldn’t take five more minutes of him.  Maybe Vic will figure it out himself.  Good luck to him.

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