J. ANNE

We didn’t have a ton of money growing up.  My parents were very young when they started a family, and we definitely struggled financially.  I didn’t know that at the time though.  I mean, we had a freaking trampoline behind our trailer house.  And my cousins came over to play all the time.  We had bikes.  And cereal.  We had all of the wonderful components of a great childhood.  But now that I’m an adult, and I vaguely understand how a checking account works, I am sure that it was difficult on my parents.

I think that it was my kindergarten year… or maybe even a year before that when my mom got a job at Dairy Queen.  Yes, you read that correctly.  My mom worked at freaking Dairy Queen.  Where they sold ice cream for goodness sake!  I told you I had all of the right components for an amazing childhood.  But anyway, I must have been in half-day kindergarten or something because I would get dropped off at Dairy Queen in the afternoons as my mom finished up her shift.  She would give me a Cherry Seven-up every single day.  I thought that I had won the lottery, but looking back… I got jipped.  Why in the heck did I get a Cherry Seven-up when I could have had an Oreo Blizzard… whatthehellmom!!

Okay, so yesterday, I took the boys through the McDonald’s drive through to get them a cookie on our way home.  I ordered a small chocolate dipped cone for myself.  When the lady at the drive thru handed me my cone I was in complete and utter shock.  It was bottom heavy and dripping.  It looked like an oozing, melting ice cream pear had been dipped into the chocolate, plopped onto a cone, and then handed through the window as though this was something that was normal.  In my head I wanted to send it back, because… it was freaking ridiculous!  My mom would have been appalled since she knows exactly how to make those three perfect puffs of ice cream with the curly que on top… the kind where the ice cream is fully encompassed into the chocolate coating so that it doesn’t start to drip the minute it is handed to you.  I was ashamed for the McDonald’s girl.  And I almost called my mom to tattle on her.  But my ice cream was leaking.  For a split second I thought about the fact that it was almost too messy to eat.

Almost.  Don’t trip.  It is ice cream, after all.  Chocolate dipped ice cream.  I ate every bite of it.

But not without cursing McDonald’s the whole time.  And I didn’t enjoy it.  At all.  I promise, Mom.

Photo :: Summer of 2014, Griffin age 3, Brodrick age 2… eating Oreo Blizzard’s at Grandma’s house.