Last night, we celebrated our anniversary by going out for ice cream. We went to a place called Bruster’s, an ice cream chain with shops located primarily east of the Mississippi. The particular location we visited is just a drive-thru/walk up shop with no indoor seating. Not that it mattered, plenty of outdoor tables and benches are installed at the front of the property and it was a surprisingly mild June evening. The three of us (of course Sloan came along) ate our frozen treats on a red bench right to the side of the ordering window.

The three of us eating ice cream cones at Bruster’s last night to celebrate our anniversary.

Because she is under 40 inches tall, Sloan enjoyed a free cake cone with vanilla ice cream topped with sprinkles. Sidney and I each ordered waffle cones – she had chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and I had birthday cake ice cream. Although I really enjoyed my ice cream, I think Sloan enjoyed hers even more. Sidney and I couldn’t help but laugh as she pretty much ate her whole dessert up until the point when she had just a small, soggy scrap of cone left. With her face and hands covered in melted ice cream, she offered both of us her “leftovers.” We politely declined.

Sloan thoroughly enjoyed her Bruster’s cone.

There was a time when I wouldn’t eat an ice cream cone. Whenever we had ice cream at home or when we visited a parlor, I always requested that it be put in a dish. I point to a few reasons for why I was so anti-cone. First, I couldn’t get past the texture and taste. My initial experiences were mostly with mass-produced cheap cake cones,  leaving a lot to be desired. The way I saw it, the crumbly and faint-tasting cones didn’t seem to pair well with the ice cream. Why ruin a good thing, right?

I was also under the impression that you got less ice cream with a cone than you did with a dish. Even though a scoop should be a scoop, when I observed ice cream parlor employees, it always seemed like a smaller scoop went into a cone while a larger scoop went into a dish. Sacrificing ice cream for something I didn’t like in the first place didn’t seem like a good proposition to me.

Last but not least, I hated the mess. It seemed to never fail––whenever I would venture out and get a cone, I would have melting ice cream running down the sides and dripping out the bottom. Too many times to count I remember the napkin that was wrapped around my cone being permanently plastered around it by the melted mess.

But like with broccoli, I developed an acquired taste for cones later in life. The combination that once seemed like soup and popsicles seemed more like peanut butter and jelly. A switch was flipped and I started to crave ice cream in a cone. Probably the biggest factor in my conversion was simply eating good cones. There is a big difference between a cake cone from a box and a fresh waffle cone made right in front of you. Several years ago I started to willingly order cones, something that I still do to this day.

I now really enjoy cones. This photo is of Sid and I eating a couple of them in Wilmington.

Although I still order ice cream in a dish from time to time, I now have an appreciation for why people enjoy cones. I am glad I have finally seen the light because an ice cream lover like myself needs to be versatile enough to eat it in different forms. Hey, cones aren’t so bad! Don’t Blink.