Monday, 5/21

It would be an amazingly hard choice.

I don't recall why, but I got into a discussion when I was downstate last weekend with someone about ice cream and our favorite flavors. As the discussion grew, the ultimate question was asked, and I have to admit it was one I couldn't answer--

If I could only have one flavor of ice cream the rest of my life, what would it be?

I know; that's like asking someone to choose between having only water or oxygen the rest of their life. I don't know how it could be done. How WOULD you choose one and only one ice cream flavor to eat until you shuffle off this mortal coil? Needless to say, I couldn't answer the question right off the bat, and even after giving it a lot of thought for a week or so, I still can't. I mean, I can narrow it down to a few favorites, but once you get passed that, it's almost impossible.

I can narrow it down to three—Jilbert's Amaretto Mackinaw Island Fudge, any brand of Mint Chocolate Chip, and a (believe it or not) vanilla that I had as part of a sundae last year at Donckers, a vanilla that was so sublime that I almost wept tears of joy. So I can get my choice down to three, and that's when my thought processes start to implode.

I just don't know which to choose.

The Amaretto Mackinaw Island Fudge has two of my favorite flavors ever, cherry and chocolate. I've loved Mint Chocolate Chip since I was a kid, and it's the ice cream I have to have every year on my birthday (to go along with the pumpkin bars I have every year on my birthday). And like I said, the vanilla I had at Donckers, which comes from a boutique ice cream company, was so ridiculously vanilla-y that it defied description.

Now do you see why I couldn't choose? Well, actually, I'm guessing most of you are saying, at least to yourself, “Why would you choose any of them?”, and you'd be perfectly valid in saying that. After all, everyone has different tastes, and I'm sure you could forego my choices for an ice cream conundrum of your own. But for me, that's as far as I can get. I can't narrow down the choices any further. And if I was pressed, I think I might rather be forced to choose between oxygen and water.

The choice is just that hard.

(jim@wmqt.com), who's curious to know—what's the one flavor YOU couldn't live without?