The Day I Switched To Soft Cones

It wasn’t a pretty story, at least the way Gail Shipp told it. She was older than me, perhaps four years older which, when you are four or five, makes her a wealth of grown-up information.

She wanted to warn me about the standard ice cream cone – the tall tapered kind which was pretty much all I knew. I had seen the soft waffle cones, but never paid much attention to them.

Until, that is, the dread secret came out.

“They put worms in the bottom of the cones,” she said.

Ahhhhhhhhh. Yukkkkkkk. Worms in the bottom of the hard cones and I couldn’t see for sure because the ice cream was packed down. I had to go as far as I dared and hope the worm was further down than I had bitten off.

You have no idea how long that affected me. Even today, I don’t use hard cones, but it’s not because of Gail’s lying misinformation. The waffle cones don’t break very easily, unlike the stiff long cones and, if I’m doing the packing, I can get quite a bit of ice cream or yogurt way down in the bottom of them.

Gail is a high school athletic coach, in the CT Basketball Hall of Fame.