Confession: I hate taking my kid out for ice cream.
I'll do just about anything to avoid it. Ice cream? Who wants ice cream? LET'S GO TO BUILD-A-BEAR INSTEAD!
Yes, it's that bad.
The thing about taking Alexis for ice cream is that it always ends with me eating the only disgusting flavor known to humankind. ALWAYS.
If we go to the place with a ton of different flavors, I end up reading the menu board to her. The flavors change daily, so it's not all that hard for me to pull a little voodoo magic. "They have chocolate, strawberry, black forest, black raspberry chocolate chunk, heavenly hash . . . " conveniently skipping all of the flavors I don't want to eat . . . "mint chocolate chip, Oreo cheesecake, dutch apple crunch," etc. I only read what I might order. Simple.
Except that the damn kid can read just enough to find the horrendous grape ice cream. It's like her superpower or something. At the very moment I don't want her to be able to read, she'll find the one word that I fear the most and she'll sound that sucker out.
"I want purple dinosaur!" she'll proclaim.
"No, you don't," I tell her. Always.
"Yes, I do! Purple dinosaur!" she'll insist.
I always tell her that I know how that story ends and NO NO NO. Inevitably, though, I wind up letting her order what she wants and a few minutes later, I find it in my hands. She is a pro at turning, "Can I try a little bit of yours?" into "How about I just keep this and you keep mine? KTHXBAI."
I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT. I swear she must put some sort of spell on me. There is no other explanation for how she manages to get me to play along with her shenanigans. It happens every single time.
Same deal if we go to Dairy Queen. We always get Blizzards and no matter what I do, I end up eating her Blizzard while she eats mine. I once tried ordering the same thing for both of us and that little attempt at trickery made her head explode into a million pieces. Let's just say I won't do that again.
I really need to dig out our ice cream maker. It's time to make what I want at home and tell the kid to back away from my happiness.
