A Childhood Memory

One of my favorite childhood memories just came to mind.

When I was a child, we used to go out to eat at those buffet-type restaurants, especially on Sundays after church. We particularly loved Old Country Buffet because the dessert area featured an ice cream machine and you got to swirl the ice cream into your bowl all by yourself (a Big Deal when you are seven).

On this particular day, we sat in a booth. My sister, Harmony, brought her bowl of swirled ice cream back to the table and climbed into the booth, where she began to scoot on her knees, facing away from our table. She clutched her ice cream in her grimy little hands as she attempted to traverse the wide expanse of the plastic-leather seat. She faced the backs of our neighboring diners.

And then she lost her grip and dumped her ice cream down the back of the man at the next booth. He wore a suit. A suit with melting ice cream smeared on the back.

I have no further memory of that day, but I imagine my mother's mortification and that man's horror and my sister's tear-stained face.

And it all makes me laugh.

See? I told you I was seven years old.