Yesterday, as I’m sure you all knew, was free cone day at Ben & Jerry’s. As a Vermonter, and the person who ate a pint of Phish Food every single night for dinner for at least one year of college, this is a sacred event. We do not miss Free Cone Day. And yet, my day yesterday was just jam packed with all sorts of non-ice-cream-related nonsense. There had to be a way.
Ruby got out of school at 2:50, along with every other child within a forty-mile radius of the scoop shop. I had a rehearsal at 4. Could it work? Clearly not, but we were going to try. I drove the car to school (half a block away) and grabbed Ruby as soon as she was halfway out of her classroom door. We sped through town, swerving around the other cars, turning sharp corners at 50 mph on two wheels, trying to arrive at the end of line before every other child in Vermont. But it was no use. The high-schoolers get out a few minutes earlier than the elementary-schoolers, and the line was already around the block and down another one.
What could we do? We stood at the end and waited. When the bitterly cold rain started, we had hope that perhaps it would cause all of the people in front of us to leave and go home, but apparently chilling storms do not deter high school students in shorts and tank tops from getting a free scoop of ice cream. My wife had come out of her office to wait with us, and she told me that if you answered a trivia question correctly, you got to skip the line. As it was now 3:30 and we had moved through only about 20% of the line, this seemed like our only hope. But the group of kids in front of us got the question, and after they all ran to the front of the line, the trivia employees disappeared. It was at this point that I left to go look for umbrellas.
The umbrellas were in the car, and by the time I got to them I was drenched. My shivering and sopping body weakly pulled the door open to retrieve the three umbrellas that I would then race back to my family, and as soon as I had them in hand, obviously, the rain stopped. So I trudged back to the line, where my wife informed me that the trivia people had come back, given her a question, and she had gotten it wrong. And it was kind of a trick question anyway. What is the most popular flavor? Everyone knows that! Cherry Garcia! And so it had been, until baout four minutes before the questions had been written, when Half-Baked took over the lead for the first time ever. Disaster. We were cold, wet, miserable, out of time, and had no ice cream. And then the angel descended upon us.
Out of nowhere, perhaps sensing our increasing despair, a young employee walked up to us from the midst of the mist and asked if we would like a trivia question. I said yes, and he asked me what happens to discontinued ice cream flavors. I knew this! They go to the flavor graveyard! I have been there many times! And just like that, we had four front-of-the-line passes in hand and were walking through the front door into the warm, delicious air of the scoop shop. It was a Free Cone Day miracle.
I now had plenty of time to get to my rehearsal! And when it was our turn to be served, the mayor of Burlington appeared from the back of the shop behind the counter, and asked Edward what kind of ice cream he wanted (chocolate, of course). He scooped it for him, and got my wife some Coconut Seven Layer Bar. From somber despair to being handed free ice cream by the mayor, it was a day of resurrection and new hope. And that, in the end, is what Free Cone Day is all about, isn’t it?
