Memory with Dad

I was assigned to write a creative non-fiction piece from my life for my creative writing class. I chose to write about a moment that I had with my dad. The piece still needs a lot of work I think, but there it is!...

How to Eat an Ice Cream Cone

My head came to just below the counter, and if I stood up on the very tip top of my Little Mermaid Velcro shoes, I could see over and watch the Hardee’s worker swirl ice cream on my crisp cone. I reached out my hands impatiently to snag it from her. Once the sweet goodness was in my grasp, I immediately opened my miniature sized mouth and tried to fit the entire ice cream sculpture inside. I was for the most part successful; however, my failures could be seen on my nose, cheeks, fingers, and my pink tank top.

“That’s not how you eat an ice cream cone,” my older brother Aaron stated, as an absolute fact, while he partook of his own swirl of sugar. With my sticky, confused face, I looked at my cone then back at my brother wondering how he had come to know the art of wrapping his tongue perfectly around his ice cream cone without getting it all over. It took me about two seconds to forget about it and continue dripping on myself and the floor.

“Wow!” said a more principal voice. “Is that how you think an ice cream cone should be eaten?” My father then got on one knee and came down to my level. He snagged my ice cream cone from my hands and panic surged through my fingertips as I let the cone go. I wanted to let out a yelp like a puppy to my mother to let her know that dad was teasing me again, but instead I watched as he licked around the edges of the cone to stop the milky flow. I didn’t know what his intentions were; if he was eating my ice cream now, or trying to help. My curiosity was cured as he handed it back into my suction cup hands.

He then told me to show him how I think an ice cream cone should be eaten. I then proceeded to try and bite off the top of the cone, while smothering my face in it and making it look more like a cowboy hat than its original pyramid.

“You look like Santa with that white beard,” he said and I giggled just like the little girl that I was. My father once again grabbed the cone from me and wiped off my face with about ten rough square napkins and licked my cone clean again. “Did you see what I did?”

“No.”

“Watch again.” He stuck out his tongue first without touching anything so that I could process all of the steps in my short, tension span mind. Then he spun the cone around in his fingers like a potter would spin a sculpture of clay. He touched the ice cream with his tongue removing all the melted parts and leaving a perfectly smooth white canvas.

I was amazed and excited to learn the secret of mastering ice cream cone eating. I didn’t know there was a correct way to do it! I went to grab the cone from him so that I could acquire this worthy skill as well.

“Wait, there’s one more step,” he said, lightly restraining me with his free hand. Following the cone straight up to his mouth, he took a bite off the top. It wasn’t as big of a bite as what I was taking before, but he pulled the cone back to reveal that he too had given himself new white facial hair. Some ice cream covered his black whiskers of his own real mustache that followed the line of his now crooked grin, and some drips dropped down on his white t-shirt. With my ice cream cone back in my hands, I stuck out my tongue and I tried his technique of licking then biting it at the top. Knowing how to do it the right way did not prevent me from making a mess and having to take a bath when I got home. The right way for me was to make a mess. I’m not quite sure when that become the wrong way to eat an ice cream cone.