The Banana Split Society and Malted Milk Memories

 After a week of humidity so thick it could be cut with a knife, the only logical response was—ice cream. Copious, unapologetic amounts of ice cream. Not that I need much encouragement to eat the dairy treat. It’s been my favorite food group since I was a toddler. When I was a teenager in the 1950s my best friend and I would walk to the corner drug store every night after school where we’d sit at their soda fountain drinking chocolate malts. And, yes, if we were lucky there was a little flirting with the boys involved. You can’t get malts made as well as they did back then when they used four scoops of ice cream, three scoops of Carnation brand malted milk powder, a dash of milk and a lot of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. 

I’m quite sure our Life Enrichment Director has one of those calendars of ‘special days’ that helps drive consumer consumption of certain foods and beverages. This week the management at my continuum care facility served malted milks at 3 PM effectively murdering our appetites for dinner at five. Not unlike the time time they served us pie on National Pi Day back in March or pączki’s on Fat Tuesday. They didn't make that mistake for National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day in April. The lunch special that day was an Elvis Burger that generated a lot of talk. Some people flatly refused to believe that Elvis Presley’s personal favorite would be anything but gross. I’m a fan of peanut and jelly so I was game to try it and I liked it. My favorite was National Wine day in May. They did a free wine tasting on the 25th. They did a beer tasting once, too, which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what I’ve known since my very first taste of beer is that unless they make it into ice cream floats I will never be talked into drinking hops based drinks again.

At another lunch time this past week five of us formed The Banana Split Society. We sat at the same table---apart from our normal table of twelve residents and we all ordered banana splits. We were separatists determined to defend our right to a full serving. It’s been on our menu all summer but all of us confessed to being embarrassed about ordering one while sitting at our usually lunch table where the norm has morphed into sharing with others as if spoons full of ice cream is the same as picking a French fry or potato chip off an offered plate. I’m a bit of a germaphobic and I don’t like sharing food and flatly refuse to where cutlery is involved. Besides, we all though we could eat a two scoops banana split all by ourselves instead of finding a partner to share one. One dish and three or four spoons. I couldn’t do that if it was the last dish of ice cream on earth. When we have our second Banana Split Society meeting the first week in August we’ve got two newbies who want to join us. Our society has only two 

two rules: 1) No sharing and 2) no regrets. Not to worry, it will be off the menu in mid-September so two more banana splits monthly meetings can’t do a lot of damage to my hips. 

Did I tell you I used to have quite a reputation for being a connoisseur of ice cream? When Don and I first started dating he teased me unmercifully about my ice cream “addiction.” He said I couldn’t pass up a cone shop if my life depended on it and he took the photo posted

to the right during one of his teasing sessions. For my birthday one year he went to a local ice cream factory/dairy and got me a twenty gallon can of my favorite flavor. Those heavy, metal dairy cans were meant for commercial use only but that didn’t deter Don from talking his way into buying one. Mint ice cream with chocolate chips, by the way, is still a favorite favor fifty something years later. 

Another year he gave me a sculpture of a girl eating an ice cream cone and I made him take it back. I was sure it would be like a bell to Pavlov’s dog, producing a conditioned reflex that would make me want ice cream every time I walked by it. I wish I had that sculpture now only because making him return it hurt his feelings---so much so that I never asked him to return a gift again. However, there were more than a few times when I could have made good use of a rubber stamp proclaiming “return for a refund.” Darn it! In my defense he did have some goofy ideas in the gift buying department. But that was Don---silly, outlandish quirks and all. Exhibit A: The year he gave me a 50 gallon gas tank for my pickup truck for Valentine’s Day and he filled it up. Granted, it was the year during Jimmy Carter’s administration when there were long lines at the gas stations and surging prices, but short-sighted me I would have rather had something romantic. Women! There is no pleasing some of us. Too bad I can't make the 'no regrets' rule apply to a few missteps and mistakes I've made in the past. ©

Until next Wednesday!

 “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” 

Soren Kierkegaard