My bald-headed son Mark stopped by our house on his way to his home next door. With a twinkle in his eye, he put a grocery sack on the counter and said, “Now, I’ve paid my debt.” As I pulled a carton out of the sack, we were both transported to the days when he was a teenager with a head full of hair and a bottomless stomach.
To set the scene for those days – I rose about five every morning before a twenty-minute drive to my school, arriving early to prepare for the day. After teaching all day and staying late for conferences, paper-grading, etc., I looked forward to a small solitary treat when I got home before I started supper and family responsibilities.
On a Saturday visit to the grocery store, I found just the thing for that treat. They had a temporary specialty ice cream – Tin Roof! With visions of my Monday afternoon snack, I told none of my family and hid the half-gallon carton carefully – under frozen turnip greens, as I recall. I knew about that bottomless stomach. I checked several times during the weekend and the last thing before I went to bed on Sunday night. The ice cream remained sealed and safely hidden.
Monday afternoon, the twenty-minute drive home was filled with visions of that well-deserved treat waiting to be scooped into a bowl. Arriving at home, I dumped my stuff on the counter and headed for the freezer where there was not even an empty carton. My husband and daughter in the den claimed total ignorance of any special ice cream. “Mark, what happened to my Tin Roof ice cream?” I called as I headed back to his bedroom.
His instant bewildered answer was, “I didn’t eat it all at one time.”
Turns out he had scored Sunday night on a freezer raid after I went to bed, eating half the carton as a bedtime snack and finished it up on Monday afternoon when he got home from school – obviously before I arrived.
I am guessing that his sense of humor, rather than his conscience, kicked in when the adult Mark saw Tin Roof once again for a limited engagement at the grocery store. I must admit that the memory, as well as that special flavor, has put a smile on my face!