Dairy Queen

I am so over Dairy Queen!

Last evening, after we finished putting on the nose bag at the Golden Palace Restaurant on Carling Avenue, we got it into our heads that he needed something sweet. Our first reaction was to drive to the Dairy Queen in Arnprior, but we telephoned ahead and confirmed they only take cash (which we didn’t have). Despondent, we drove on, only to discover another Dairy Queen along the way in Kanata. We stopped there on the chance they might take credit cards which it turned out they do. Elated by our good fortune, we joined the line of the West End teenagers, children and parents and ordered our Choco-Cherry Love Blizzard and peanut buster parfait , which we then consumed under the blazing white fluorescent lights at a small white plastic table with white plastic chairs overlooking the adjoining and now darkened parking lot.
The parfait (which I had) had been prepared for me by a young girl, one of several relatively unattractive teens employed in the place, all highly skilled in the speedy production of the various concoctions of sugar and petroleum by-products. While she didn’t have the pizzazz of the young black boy who wielded his plastic cups about like so much paraphernalia in an acrobatic act, she did, I noted with no small interest, put a generous dollop of chocolate syrup and salted peanuts at the bottom of the plastic cup before injecting the so-called soft ice cream, subsequently topped with more syrup and peanuts. The final product was a burgeoning mountain of nuts, syrup and cream, barely contained by the receptacle and hardly able to accommodate the long plastic red spoon which she swiftly inserted into the side of the jumble.

In an effort to dignify the ceremony, I pretended to be delicate about the act of consumption, measuring the proportion of each spoonful carefully, though my primary concern was more to avoid spilling any of the chocolate mixture upon my vanilla silk shirt. Normally I would have felt uncomfortably conspicuous in such an environment; however, our immediate neighbours were a family of five who persisted in shouting or screaming whatever they said to one another (and I later discovered remnants of ice cream and fruit sauce upon the floor surrounding their table), so our presence went practically unnoticed. Looking around at the large congregation of people who were constantly coming and going, I absently remarked that I had no idea there were so many people who didn’t drink.

Upon leaving the place, we merely groaned. But it wasn’t until this morning that the full import of our indulgence was felt. Neither of us had slept well last night, plagued by night sweats and unpleasant dreams. My protuberant belly felt as though I had consumed a glob of tar.