Ritas ice creamOne of the problems with buying an ice cream cone in the middle of a hazy, hot, and humid summer is melt speed.

Get a large cone and you’re forced to inhale it to minimize the inevitable dribble-down-the-hand mess, but you risk brain freeze eating too fast.

Plus, when you suck down ice cream the ability to savor the flavor is diminished by 79.4% according to a study in the Journal of I Made That Shit Up.

Sure, you could order your soft serve in a cup, but what fun is that? It’s not. You twist-cone your soft serve. You cup-pack your hard scoop. It’s the law.

What you might do to mitigate the lick-to-melt race is downgrade to a regular cone and be satisfied with that. But what if you wanted more than a regular?

This is what you do:

Your husband drives you to Rita’s and you order a regular-sized cone and tear in. Mere blocks away, he notices that you’re almost down to the cone already and there’s another Rita’s nearby.

He says “Kath. You’re making good progress on that. Do you want another?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Next Rita’s, please.”

In the time it takes to get to Rita’s #2 you’ve just polished off the bottom tip of the cone, you know, that part – the best part – that serves as a handy reservoir for all the melty goodness that collected at the bottom. That last crunch is the delicious period on your ice cream sentence.

You pull into Rita’s #2, get out, order a second regular twist on a waffle cone, pay, and dig in again.

A mile out, you begin to realize the error of your ways.

1. Regular + half a regular = uncomfortably full.

2. You don’t want to finish Part II of the Twist Plan because you’re not a garbage disposal and your waistline wants no part of those unwanted calories. Your driver rejects them, too.

So now what?

This is what you do:

You ask your husband to pull over at the next out-of-the-way place so that you can dispose of .5 of a regular ice cream cone.

“Where?” he asks.

“Over there. The cemetery.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

You pull aside and scooch up close to the grass. You lower the window. You stick your arm out and with one flick of a wrist the cone contents come flying out  – TTHHWWIIIIPPP! – and into the grass, where ants within a ten foot radius can’t believe their good fortune that the sky delivered them ice cream like a screaming meteor and plopped it at their feet.

Ahhhhh! Much better.

You’re now left with just the cone, coated in a bit of residual ice cream, in all its crunchy goodness, with only enough calories you consider reasonable to eat.

Yes, I will still order soft-serve in scorching heat. No, I will not get it in a cup. Yes, I know that’s easier, but it’s just not the same. Summers are for twisties and sprinkles and improving melt management skills. This 50-something kid still has a lot to learn.

Stumble it!