icecream

“I mean, the thing is, I could die…haven’t you considered that?  I could die, and there you’d be and, you know everyone would blame you.”

“You don’t need to explain yourself to me.  Just give me the money and this can all go away.  I won’t say another word about it, but you’re going to pay me ‘cause that’s the deal.”

Survivor?  No.  Fear Factor.  Not even.  Cool Hand Luke?  Well, close.  But Thanksgiving vacation was hardly life on a chain gang.  I was marked, that was true, but I was also guilty.  Yet again I allowed my spirited mouth to speak for itself.  A short drive following a bountiful, emphasis on full, Thanksgiving dinner.  The discourse digressed.  The drive drove.  On and on.  Thanksgiving, thanks, thankfulness.  Family, friends, food.  Delicious, desserts.  Ice cream.  Coffee ice cream.  My absolute favorite. 

“I love coffee ice cream.  I could eat a gallon of it.” 

So very tempting.  Our son dozed in the back seat pinched between his aunt and uncle.  My husband, who drove the car, could not resist temptation.  Did we pull into the closest Baskin Robbins? No, too expensive.  “No you couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t what?”

“Eat a gallon of ice cream.  There’s no way you could eat an entire gallon of ice cream.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” Aidan questioned, waking when the car turned onto the main road.

“Your mother says that she can eat a gallon of ice cream and I say she can’t.”

 “I want ice cream!” The other passengers faced opposite directions, staring out into the dusk, desperate to not be engaged.

 “Sure, we’ll get ice cream.”  With that, the car pulled into the grocery store’s parking lot. 

“Why don’t you think I can do it?  Anyway, they’re probably not open, it’s a holiday.”  They were open.  Our relationship was built on such.  I would make my claim, he would make his rebuttal.   He the voice of reason and logic, I the voice of passion and ideal.

The half eaten box of coffee ice cream was hardly offering the consolation it should have as it sat, melting on my lap.  The first few bites were divine, as always, but as the stakes set in, the frothy milkshake like contents of the soggy box became less and less appealing.

“It’s not that I don’t want to do it.  I’ll do it, because I said that I would, but I don’t want to die!  I mean, do you want me to die?”

My husband stared down at me from his perch upon the kitchen barstool.  Beside him, his brother, the sidekick to my nemesis, giggled beneath the collar of his shirt, pulled up to cover his mouth.  “You’re not going to die anyway.  Susan’s just trying to psyche you out.  You can’t die from this, don’t be so ridiculous.  If you’re scared, say you’re scared, and pay up.”  He bumped congratulatory fists with his brother and turned back to the Thanksgiving Day football game, already in progress.

“I’m not trying to psyche her out.  I’m on her side, but I don’t want her to mess up her kidneys.  I would feel terrible if she left here on a crash cart.  I think that we should call my sister.  I’d just feel a lot better…if she says it’s okay, then it’s probably okay.”

Susan’s sister is a nurse.  Susan is my sister-in-law, i.e. wife of my nemesis’ brother.  I wanted to believe that she was on my side.  I needed someone else on my side if I was going to get through this…alive or dead.  I was three quarters of the way through just one of the two boxes of coffee ice cream and then the additional pint that would make a gallon.

“Don’t you remember the story of that one woman who died because she drank too much water?  I think that Carrie should at least have an okay before we allow her to do something that could cause her entire system to shut down.”

Her entire system to shut down…was she serious?  My son, three years old slept in a downstairs bedroom of our family’s beach house.  Next year, I’m leaving these people at home, I thought.  Jason especially, i.e., the nemesis, my husband.

 I took another bite.  Despite the taunts, I had yet to gag, but I was bored.  I should have thought about what I was saying…how many times had that been my mantra.  If I’d have only kept my mouth shut…he pounced on every opportunity and every time I allowed pride to sucker me in.  I once spent three hours naming professional golfers, successfully I might add, simply because I needed to prove that I could.  HE said that I only concluded at three hours because he allowed Anika Sorenstam to count.  Fortunately, there was no money involved in that incident.  I had agreed to name all thirty in one hour and failed…somewhere around Sorenstam’s name.  I was banking on the LPGA names too but changed my strategy when he gave me grief over Anika.  Michelle Wie was out and we were well into the second hour when I burst out with “Payne Stewart!”  We might not count the lady golfers, but Payne Stewart would count, alive or dead.

  While she was fairly certain I might not die, thank you for the might, she was confident I would become terribly sick at some point.  After all, participants in Nathan’s annual hotdog eating contests trained for months to gorge themselves with food.  I had only decided to go through with this hours before.  She could not be certain what the excessive amounts of sugar would do to my natural insulin levels.  I could not be sure what the millions of extra calories would do to my waistline.

 “It’s not fair that I have to eat that pint too.”

“What do you mean it’s not fair?  That was the deal!  You set the rules; you said one gallon of ice cream.  That’s one gallon.”

“I know, but when I said that, I thought that one gallon meant two boxes.  I thought that a box was a half gallon.”

 “Oh, yeah, I thought that too,” Susan offered.

 I scraped at the froth around the corners of the box.  “Look, she’s slowing down.  It’s okay if you want to stop.  No one’s going to judge you.”

“Right, you just want your money.  I’m fine.”

I was Cool Hand Luke, simply hanging on for the amusement of others.  Well, and Christmas was too close to hand over one hundred dollars over a mere incident of over confidence.    Couldn’t he understand my predicament?  Didn’t he care?  He was supposed to honor me in sickness and health, and poor judgment.  And, of all people, he should have been able to relate.  On the Fourth of July, several years earlier, Jason and two friends had engaged in a Cool Hand Luke inspired egg eating marathon.  Luke ate fifty hardboiled eggs.  Jason ate two dozen fried eggs, and a loaf of bread.  Together, the two friends ate the equivalent and then threw them back up.  Jason beamed, triumphant.

He would never just let this go.  His resolve, like his stomach, was steel.  My spoon dug the bottom of the first box.  I swished the bite down with water.  I no longer savored each bite but swallowed methodically, taking care though not to get a brain freeze.

 Halftime sent the guys rummaging for Thanksgiving leftovers.  “I shouldn’t have eaten so much of that.  This would be a whole lot easier…”

 "It’d be a whole lot easier if you’d quit talking…”

My eyes rolled, instinctively.  “That’s okay; I won’t bother to talk to you the whole way home tomorrow.” 

“That’s seven hours.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Promise?”

 Again, my eyes responded.

“I just don’t know what you’re going to say if I end up in the hospital with an ice cream coma…”

“I’m going to say, ‘this is my wife.  She has issues.’”  He chomped on a turkey leg; the obnoxious smirk never left his face.  I wanted him to choke, briefly.

 I won’t bother to mention the chirps coming from the hyena occupying the other barstool.  Neither will I bother to mention that Susan now busied herself with a magazine.  So it was, me and them.  And, just as I was about to offer, “ they’ll ask why you didn’t bother to stop me, why you stood idly and watched me destroy myself, why you chose not to save me….”  back to the second half.  Football took precedence.

Alone with my thoughts and the sweaty Bryer’s carton, my lap now wet from its perspiration.  Alone.  Time for contemplation.  Time for reflection.  Time for prayer.  Ultimately, I could not be swayed.  The taste never failed me.  In fact, based on taste alone, I could have continued indefinitely.  The profuse sweating, clouded thoughts, blurry vision, stomach cramps, heart palpitations, convulsive vomiting, never came.  I didn’t faint.  I didn’t spew.  I didn’t die.  I also didn’t finish the challenge. Kobayashi I was not. My concession speech was short.  There was little celebration from the opposition.  The financial transactions were made the following week in a private meeting.  And I, I slept surprisingly well that night. Ultimately, one hundred dollars wasn’t worth risking my health.    My nemesis won and my husband lost a few Christmas gifts that he’d never miss anyway.  I was content in my decision.  I could have done it, though it may have meant my demise.   

Copyright © 2011. Carrie Ellen Campbell. All Rights Reserved. http://carriellencampbell.blogspot.com. Please respect Carrie's intellectual property. Sharing blog posts is permitted, but no part of this material may be copied, downloaded, reproduced, or printed without express written consent. Contact Carrie at: carrieellencampbell@icloud.com.