body by dq

Until I became an addict, I never realized just how available and easy it was to get a fix. Not an addiction in the cocaine or marijuana sense but, rather, to soft-serve ice cream.

A few months ago, while driving along, I passed by a Dairy Queen. It had been years since I last ate at a Dairy Queen, so I stopped with the intention of getting a small ice cream cone and soft drink. I had never been a large fan of soft serve ice cream, but felt that, with the economy in such bad shape, this was the least I could do to help stimulate it.

The colorful and tasty looking pictures on the menu board above the registers made me realize that a single, small cone simply wouldn’t suffice. So I ended up ordering a Blizzard…the Pecan Cluster one to be exact. And whether due to the pecans or the butterscotch syrup, I became a soft-serve ice cream convert. Ice cream that had previously been overlooked in favor of other, tastier, dessert choices now became an absolute necessity.

And it wasn’t until I became hooked on these Blizzards that I realized just how many Dairy Queens we have around the city. Previously, I would drive right by them, never even realizing that they were taking up retail space at the mall, and in the shopping plaza situated in between the Eckerd Drug and the Chinese dry cleaning place, and a mere half mile away from the public library.

Now I saw them everywhere I went. And every day as I passed one, I would suddenly find myself turning into the parking lot…justifying that a Blizzard was in order as a ‘reward’ for something that I had accomplished that day. For that sale I had made at the office. For letting that blue Chevy merge onto the highway in front of me. For only hitting the snooze button twice instead of my customary three times.

But as the rewards I tried concocting became more and more inane, I simply began telling myself that I ‘deserved' one and that ‘life was too short’. Because what could be more worthless than a life filled without M&M Blizzards? Or Butterfinger Blizzards? Or even the Oreo Blizzards, which aren't my first choice in achieving Blizzard bliss, but are still entirely acceptable as a last resort.

Near the end of summer, at perhaps the darkest hour of my ice cream addiction, my friend Jim returned from vacationing in Florida.

“You know,” he told me, “Florida is like a completely different world. The people down there are all so thin and good looking…at least compared to up here. Maybe it’s because the winters are so cold here in the North, and people spend half the year bundled up in bulky clothes...so they don’t worry too much about trying to stay thin. But down in Florida? You wouldn’t believe all the tanned, beautiful girls! And in bikinis year round! I definitely need to consider moving.”

That evening, as I stared into the mirror, I glanced upon the new waistline that Dairy Queen had given me and realized just how far away Florida really was.