Ice cream freeze

We discovered a Carvel's ice cream stand in our neighborhood this weekend.  It's sequestered in the Jerry's sub shop and is a welcome addition to any suburban landscape.  We went there after my son's baseball game on Sunday, and again tonight after the spring band concert at his school.  As the scheduling gods would have it, my daughter's concert was at the same time, different school.  So we parents split the duties and paired off with the respective gendered match to enjoy the dulcet tones of elementary and middle school musicians.

As is often the case, I will find just about any excuse to enjoy a soft serve chocolate cone, so we just HAD to swing by the ice cream joint to pick up the cones.  Just as we got into the car, my daughter called, trolling for a cone for her too.  I hadn't offered to bring any home, as we do have ice cream in the freezer(s), but she called to jump on the Carvel's bandwagon.  

I could've lied and said "we're pulling out of the parking lot" but instead, sucker that I am, I got out to buy my sweet daughter a cone.  Of course, in the 45 seconds between leaving the shop, getting the call, and re-entering the shop, the entire neighborhood of South Four Corners decided to get a cone too.

Actually, they bought banana splits.  And actually, it was a family of 4 (or 6).

So I stood in line, waiting while the single Carvel's lady assembled a banana split, which consists of every sweet condiment in the store, including, or course, peeling and slicing a fresh banana and topping the whole concoction with whipped cream and caramel syrup.  Of course the ice cream was ROCK hard and the whipped cream was fussy, so the entire process for 1 banana split took about 4 minutes.  I timed it based on the elapsed time between phone call and delivery of split.

Now I'm already irritated that I succumbed to the will of the 10 year old, but now I'm in line behind the Banana Split family, who, unbeknownst to me, don't just want one.  When the split is finally completed, mom orders another one.  Four minutes later, presented again with another work of art, she orders another one.  I don't know if she's still ordering more, because I left.

It wasn't the quantity of the deserts; it was the deliberate way that each desert was ordered sequentially that pushed me ever closer to madness.  I weighed the frustration of waiting close to 15 minutes for one ice cream cone against the disappointment of a daughter.  She'll have many opportunities for disappointment-- I may as well continue the trend.

So I came home empty handed, scooped her a bowl from the freezer , and told her this would taste better because the cone I would have brought home would have tasted like anger.  Now while this entire episode only took about 30 minutes out of my life today (including writing about it), it doesn't compare with this guy's experience at a Subway shop downtown...this one is, as Jim Rome so irritatingly says,  "Klassik".