The Ultimate Game

It's no secret people like to lick. They lap, slurp, suck and love too. We're American, after all. That's why today's post is about ice cream.

You might be thinking that enjoying an ice cream cone is the ultimate relaxation. Perhaps you abhor the notion that an ice cream cone will inevitably be the most anxious part of your sunny Sunday afternoon. Either way, I propose you suspend your traditional notion of this dessert and join me down the ever expanding road to foolproof anxiety by imagining you just paid for your cone and you are walking out of your local ice cream eatery.

You open the door, the sun hits your face, and you take that satisfying first lick of your chosen flavor. Chocolate. Strawberry. Vanilla. It's like the 1950's all over again where purity reigned. As your tongue savors the past you realize the past is catching up to you. And quickly. Before you know it, the ice cream is melting sans regard... along with your emotions. Desperate, you try to lap up each falling drip. The 1960's pass you buy, in earnest. Now it's 1970 and you've realized your regrets-- trying to eat this cone before it eats you. Look down at the atrocity of your life, er, I mean cone, and it's 1980. A half spilled cone, dollars wasted-- survival of the fit.

That ice cream cone, which promised you joy, is now pushing you to a nervous breakdown. How on earth can anyone eat as fast as it melts? Mind you, it's 1990 now, and you have TONS of fillings.

Brain freeze sets in. Flash forward ten more years.

Sticky sugar all over your hand and wrist. A wasted napkin torn to bits by the ice cream onslaught. You turn to your friend, who was smart enough to get a cup instead of a cone, tells you what time it is.

Now you've arrived.

Anxiety.