Rocky Road

You can get excited about anything.  We have a friend who’s so excited about ice cream, he makes me want it.  I didn’t eat ice cream for twenty years and could have gone twenty more.  I’d say, “It tastes like dog spit,” when people tried to tempt me.  Around this guy, I look forward to it.

The ice cream friend invited us to his home.  “Come over for ice cream,” he told us.  “My wife’s making dinner things, but I’ll have ice cream.”  Charlie was excited all day, looking forward to the ice cream evening.

The first thing he did was show us his garage.  “I always hide an extra half gallon in the freezer,” he says.  “I hide a spoon out here, too, so I can sneak it and no one will know.”

“You have a spoon in the freezer?” we ask.  “Isn’t it frozen, too?”

“Yeah,” he says.  “Although I went out here today, and I noticed my spoon was gone.  I couldn’t get another one without being outed, and I couldn’t find anything else to use.  Remind me to find another spoon.”

It’s easy to be around a guy who likes ice cream.

He wanted to show us his new deck.  I forgot how many rocks this family has in their yard.  They have rocks where other people have ground cover.

He had to go help his little son, so we kept peeking around.  Up in the back of their lot, the ice cream guy set up a fake buck.  He likes archery and judging by all the holes in the buck, he’s pretty good.  I remember him saying he bought this house specifically because the lot was long enough to shoot things.  I wasn’t sure what he meant when he said that.

Hiding behind some trees, further behind the buck was something else.  Something unnatural.  Charlie went to investigate.

“It’s a child’s rocking horse set,” he said.  “What’s that doing up here?”

“A companion to the buck?” 

Charlie then sat on the child’s rocking horse.  I had my camera, so I took a picture.  It’s not everyday you see a Police Lieutenant riding a child’s rocking horse in some guy’s bushes.  We went back before anyone saw us.

The ice cream guy is about as excited about rocks as he is about ice cream.  He arranges big hikes all over the world and returns with big rocks.  The big rocks end up in the yard.  The yard is like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Rocks fill the whole front and back yard.  They’re everywhere, bordering pathways and landscaping, in groups like plants, assembled like a jigsaw puzzle to create pathways.  It looks like something from a fairy tale, a suburban rock-filled fairy tale. 

You can see granite, marble, and slate rocks, and rocks as green as jade.  Some have patterns like ribbons running through them and some are layered-looking.  They’re like rocks you’d see in upscale landscaping stores.  The ice cream guy pulled them out of the middle of nowhere and took them home, one rock at a time. 

“Come here,” he told Charlie from across the yard.  “I’ll show you which rocks I carried for 4 ½ miles last Sunday.”  Off they went while us women talked about X husbands and other things not much different than rocks.

Charlie showed me later which rock he carried for 4 ½ miles.  It weighed twenty-five pounds.  He saw another one on the trail with two miles to go, so he carried that one back in his other arm.  It was almost fifteen pounds.  If I carried either of these rocks 4 ½ miles, I’d hide ice cream and a spoon in my freezer, too.

“Do you like quality or quantity?” Charlie asked while examining a big chunk of granite.

“Quantity, definitely,” he said.  “I don’t like rich ice cream.  You get full too fast.  I don’t like expensive ice cream either.  You don’t get enough.  Other than that, I’ll eat any kind you put in front of me.”

For someone who’s had eating disorders like me, it’s easy to be around someone who enjoys what he wants to without worrying about what other people think.  Maybe that’s why he’s the skinniest of all our friends.

Or maybe we need to do more hiking.

A little help? [] 11:21:46 PM