Sundae, Bloody Sundae!

Today Lileks has this picture on the bleat.  Wow!  That brought back memories.  We had a little ice cream hut near our house and sometimes in summer mom or dad would drive there and my sister and I would get to split a banana split and, being a boy, I got to keep the little, plastic “boats” the banana splits were served in.  How did I use them?  When I took my once a week, Saturday bath (whether I needed it, or not) they became a fleet of naval destroyers that I played with until the water was freezing cold and I looked like Dick Tracy’s nemesis, Pruneface.

As a parent it is easy to forget how important, and often fun, the little things are.  My folks were very young and rather impoverished.  I imagine they wished they could afford to buy both of us a banana split, and they probably wished they could do it more than a few times each summer.  And I’m sure my dad wished his son could have a real toy boat to play with in the bath.  But to my sister and I it was all great fun!  We would debate over which toppings to get on the split, and how to divvy it up; she liked chocolate, I hated it, and I loved vanilla which she was impartial to.  So, the end scoops were easy, but that middle scoop of strawberry?  I’m sure we spent at least an hour prior to each visit deciding how that would be divided and there is no toy boat that could have brought me any more joy than my fleet of sundae ships.  Kids are very adaptable.  They can make fun out of almost anything as long as you let them.

Here’s what Lileks has to say:

An exciting Carnival of Flavors! Those would be sugar, sugared chocolate, sugar sprinkles, and jelled sugar-wheels dyed with chemicals guaranteed to be tested on bunny-eyeballs. How many millions of those plastic boats slumber in the 60s stratum of the landfills, never to be kissed by the light of the sun again?

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