Jane Macdougall: The Bookless Club and the Social Science of Ice Cream Cones

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There are few things more intimate. Few things are so revealing.

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You can play tennis with a virtual stranger. You can have dinner with an acquaintance. Many are the relationships started over coffee. The call for drinks spans a social spectrum from first dates to business meetings.

We acknowledge these conventions. We understand these things.

But if he were a social scientist, and, in a way, aren’t we all? – and you were looking to rehearse human relations, you would want to go yourself and your clipboard to the ice cream parlor.

That’s where the data is. That’s social science crap.

Frozen.

There are no casual relationships in the ice cream parlor.

Ice cream is personal. Ice cream is intimate. Ice cream changes everything.

If someone comes up with the idea of ​​buying ice cream cones, you know you’ve taken the relationship to the next level. It has all the hallmarks of, say, going to a baseball game, but condensed down to, well, condensed down to the time it takes for an ice cream cone to melt.

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The idea of ​​going for a cone is equivalent to announcing, “I approve of you. I enjoy your company.”

But that’s just the beginning.

“Ohhhh… you’re a Vanilla Burnt Almond man, I see!”

“Ohhhh… so the lady prefers chocolates and cream, I see!”

A tablespoon? Conservative and conventional.

Two spoons? Spontaneous and easy going.

Three tablespoons?! A risk taker with a wild side.

sugar cone? A hedonist.

regular cone? Someone with the common touch. Low maintenance.

No cone? Instead, a plate and a spoon? Cautious with introverted tendencies.

Yes. All of this is on display in the ice cream parlor.

In elementary school there was a teacher who invited her entire class for ice cream on the last day of school. I thought this was a bug. If you wanted to curry favor with your little loads, take them for cones on the first day. Doing it the first day is like tipping the Maitre D’: incentive. I can still remember what I ordered. I can still remember who ordered Tiger Tail, an orange and licorice concoction that made me cringe at my simple chocolate cone. Tiger Tail seemed like a bohemian option. My imagination ran wild. Here was an adventurer. Here was a bon vivant. Clearly, he was a man of the world. The teacher asked for strawberry. He adored her and wished he could change my cone to show my devotion to her. But he was torn: the exotic tiger tail and all that went with it, or the variety of strawberries from the garden? All of this had to be considered and resolved.

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In third grade.

In my adult life, I’ve made ice cream a couple of times. Each and every time it was always the same flavor: rhubarb. When you grow rhubarb, you are always looking for ways to implement rhubarb. Rhubarb is the spring equivalent of summer squash. Hmmmm…zucchini ice cream? No, maybe not.

This Sunday is National Ice Cream Day. I called Baskin-Robbins, with over 8,000 locations, they’re the world’s largest ice cream chain, and asked for some gift certificates. They obliged. Baskin-Robbins also gave me a certificate for a year of ice cream! If this opens your palate, check out my website. And if you try their grilled peaches and cream, let me know if I need to deviate from my chocolate norm.

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Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former columnist for the National Post who lives in Vancouver. She will write in The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Vancouver Sun. To learn more about what Jane is up to, visit her website, janemacdougall.com

This week’s question for readers:

What could you eat every day and never get tired? Do you have memories of the ice cream parlor??

Email your answers, not as an attachment, in 100 words or less, along with your full name to Jane at [email protected]. We will print some next week in this space.

Answers to last week’s question for readers:

What are the times in your life when good intentions went off the mark? Did you ever get it so wrong when you tried to get it so right??

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• My mother used to tell this story: Back in the days when, as Dylan Thomas wrote, I was so stoned and so much nicer, I was watching my mother vacuum the living room rug. Before doing so, she sprinkled a white powder on it (I assumed it was some kind of air freshener) and then proceeded to vacuum. Maybe it was the phone or some other distraction that took her away from her work for a while, but when she returned she discovered that she had somehow gotten hold of a large box of cornstarch and was applying it liberally to the entire carpet. . When she stopped in her tracks, I apparently gave her a big smile and said, “I’m helping you! I’m helping you! A little help.

philip tingey

• I was an assistant manager at a large hotel in London, England and our New Year’s Eve gala dinner and dance were completely sold out. Unbeknownst to me, the hotel engineer had wired the loudspeaker system to broadcast the midnight chimes of Big Ben for the 1972 arrival countdown. During dinner, the band played all the popular songs related to the celebration. , but were overshadowed by the public address system. hotel reception system looking for guests. I went to the office to turn down the volume, only to find that the volume knob had been removed to prevent tampering. Unaware of this, I reached for a screwdriver and turned it off. At the appropriate time, the band stopped and the radio was turned on. Silence followed. Everyone on stage stirred, embarrassed, until a minute after midnight the bandleader announced, red-faced, “Happy New Year everyone!” They called the engineer and gave him a good scolding, but he announced that some idiot had turned off the speakers. I slipped away and never ever admitted that he was that jerk.

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alan gray

• His story reminded me of an incident in the early 1970’s when I had just gotten my driver’s license and all I wanted to do was drive. Anywhere at any time. He had a job delivering groceries for IGA in North Vancouver. Like the Harry Chapin song “Taxi,” I used my green Ford Econoline as a foggy, weedy getaway vehicle, just waiting for Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein” to play on the tiny AM radio so I could turn it up to the max and share it. with all our clients.

One day, I had the idea to wash the truck and show Ken, the manager, how hard-working he was. I got the hose out and proceeded to scrub the sides of the truck with fresh SOS pads. I took my time turning the van around. I could see the dirt coming off all over the foam on the pads and the wet van gleamed brightly in the sun. As I headed back to where I had started, the truck had dried out and to my horror all I could see were millions of circular “wax, wax” scratches all over the truck. I quickly cleaned up the truck and headed to the nearest dirty back alley and covered him up again.

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A couple of weeks later, I overheard Ken talking to another employee and wondering how all the damage had happened. I resigned soon after and started logging into Haida Gwaii.

Rod Coleman

• I remember years ago visiting some friends who had moved to Calgary. In the morning, they got up early and went to work, and I slept late. When I finally got up and went to her kitchen to get my morning coffee, I noticed that some of her cups were so stained and dirty with a fuzzy brown coating. inside, that I would never have considered using them for my morning drink. I chose a cleaner cup and then spent many hours scrubbing and cleaning the insides of dirty cups. When my friends got home from their day at work, we sat down for afternoon tea. They went to use their cups, which now had sparkling clean interiors. I will never forget the totally shocked, surprised and outraged looks on their faces. They told me those were their precious teacups. Apparently, they had allowed (and encouraged) a layer of tea to build up inside the cups, over the years, as this supposedly enhances the tea-drinking experience. I had never heard of such a thing.

Honestly, I don’t remember if I was ever invited to stay at their house again.

michele libling