Finally, other people's dangerous allergies do something for me
If you know me, you know I hate peanuts. I'm not allergic to them at all. I just hate them with a passion. If you have two minutes, I can tell you the story of the crucial moment in my childhood where I first hated them. Peanuts, peanut butter, peanut products. People say, "You hate peanuts? What's wrong with you?" I hear it from people. I say back to those critics, "What's wrong with you, man? What's wrong with you?"
In my hatred, something I'd always missed out on was Drumsticks. As a kid, I was transfixed. Here we had chocolate-dipped ice cream atop a miraculous chocolate-lined cone. I didn't know how scientists had built the Drumstick or why they had chosen to share them with the masses. I just knew they had erred in the final step. They had put peanuts on top. I didn't have the long-term memory of, say, a Cam Jansen, but I never forgot the moment in the elementary school gym when I bit into one, realized and found my hopes crushed like so many… you know.
But when I went to the supermarket last month and strode the ice cream aisle, I nearly jumped through the freezer glass. "For those of us with too much nuttiness in our lives already… finally, The Original Sundae Cone without nuts." There it was. A peanut-free Drumstick.
Plus, the ice cream inside was Cookies & Cream, my favorite, and the cone was entirely chocolate and yet still chocolate lined. Growing child allergies to peanuts had finally done something for me and liberated the Drumstick. Sure, the allergic kids were still taking a chance; a tiny font on the side of the nutrition box told of the product's manufacture on equipment shared with peanut products. But I had nothing to fear. Maybe the lifelong effects of eating ice cream where a lone cone gave my blood half of its daily saturated fat. But beyond that, nothing. How the discovery gave me hope, I couldn't explain. I dreamed that night of Cookies and Cream Reese's, almond Crackerjacks, a brittle-free world with butter and jelly sandwiches and an Elvis who just fried bananas.
January 26th, 2011 at 6:10 PM
Welcome, Facebook people! Drumstick e-mailed me out of the blue the other day and asked if they could link to my blog. So random. Who ever expects to get an e-mail from an ice cream company? But cool. Thanks for visiting. I'm glad we can all love ice cream together.
January 27th, 2011 at 7:31 AM
[...] at Drumstick's PR firm saw my blog post about the product this week, and they e-mailed to ask if they could link to it from Facebook. I of course said yes. [...]