It’s odd to think about but ice cream has played a constant role in my life. It’s not my favorite dessert – that would have to go to the holy trinity of chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake, and apple pie – but it’s certainly adjacent, often literally. Ice cream is for celebration. It marks occasions. If I hear certain annoying songs coming from a truck, I think of it. Ice cream is summer. Even as an adult, I get it often. Van Leeuwen, Mr. Softee, Ample Hills, Ben and Jerry’s, whatever.

I don’t have one cohesive thought on this, so here are a bunch of impressions.

1.

My friend Josh once told me that he only eats ice cream that was made “on premises.” I found it a little absurd because I had no idea that that level of ice cream snobbery existed. Over time I came to respect that opinion, though. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with liking what you like how you like it.

2.

Every summer I went to the Poconos, close to where my mother grew up, to see my grandmother and hang out with my cousins who drove up from Atlanta. It was a trip for my mother and me. My dad dropped us off, drove back to Rochester, then came to pick us up. When we would drive home, we would stop in Ithaca and walk around Cornell for an hour and my dad would make sure we went by the dairy barn to get ice cream. I don’t remember how it tasted, just that it seemed fresher than any other ice cream I ever had. Those visits are probably why I went to Cornell.

3.

I’m a sugar cone guy, always have been always will be. Waffle cones seem like they would be delicious but they’re a little ostentatious for my taste. Stick with the classics.

4.

I worry that perhaps I shouldn’t drink alcohol because my mother died of alcoholism. But I still eat ice cream and that’s what killed my dad. Technically it was an aortic aneurysm but I’m sure it had to do his weight, which spiked, unfortunately, in his sixties. He used to eat it every night. My mother would buy it – chocolate chip, mint chocolate chip, vanilla, Perry’s, Bryers, whatever was on sale – and then never eat any or attempt to eat any and then complain that there was never any left. It was his nightly ritual.

5.

The Nutty Buddy: what would elementary school be without it?

6.

Ben and Jerry’s used to not be corporate. It used to not be available in every bodega in the city (or so I imagine, I only got here in the nineties). I suppose they didn’t start the expansion of flavors from vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry but I think they did start the trend of interesting combinations of flavors.

7.

I love chocolate, hate chocolate ice cream. That disconnect has most likely saved me from obesity.

8.

Ample Hills is one of the most typically Brooklyn things in existence. Its name comes from a Walt Whitman poem and all of its locations are in hotbeds of gentrification: Prospect Heights, Gowanus (next to the shuffleboard joint), and Brooklyn Bridge Park. And it’s a dumb name but holy shit is Ooey Gooey good.

9.

It’s not an “ice cream headache,” it’s a brain freeze and it’s only caused by Slurpees. If you get one while eating ice cream, you need to toughen up, friend.

10.

“The Emperor of Ice Cream” is proof that I simply do not understand poetry. I’m sure I first read it because I knew that Wallace Stevens was an Important Poet and it sounded like maybe I could understand it in a Billy Collins kind of way. No such luck. Even after reading the explanation, I still don’t understand a word of it. Apparently it’s about preparing ice cream to be served at a wake. You know how, like, whenever you go to a wake and they have… ice cream.

11.

Huge pet peeve: when the soft serve isn’t cold enough and it immediately starts melting.

12.

Vegan ice cream works for me. Almond or cashew based, I can tell it’s not actual ice cream but it’s great just the same. Remember TCBY? That was a thing for a while. It was my first exposure to frozen yogurt. Twenty years later I moved to Brooklyn and was bombarded. I remember it being considered a healthy alternative to ice cream and not really buying that that was true. Tasti D-Lite, is that still a thing? And what the hell is gelato anyway?

13.

One summer, probably after my junior year of high school, I was playing house league soccer (a low stakes league for fun where anyone could sign up to play) and my dad was the coach. On the last day, the opposing coach brought a whole bunch of ice cream from his store. Both teams hung out on a beautiful July evening and ate it. My friend’s mother took a picture of my dad and me. I’m a floppy haired kid who’s a year away from leaving Rochester. My dad is smiling at the camera like he didn’t have a care in the world even though he had plenty. It was a nice night.