Ice Cream Sandwiches

In a stream of consciousness, my last post reminded me of this event.

My oldest sister loved to read. As a matter of fact she didn't do much else besides that. O.K., that's not exactly true. She was 16 at the time and in high school and she had just turned old enough to get a real job besides babysitting. She worked at a local hospital doing key punch cards or something related to old computer data input technology. The important point here is not what job she was doing but the fact that this meant she had her own disposable income. She was rich!! And a little lazy too I might add (what 16 year old isn't?)

One weekend she stayed upstairs in her bed practically the whole day just reading away. Her room which she shared with two others of us was in a remodeled attic. About the middle of the afternoon a couple of my other siblings and I went up to see what she was doing. You know how nice it is to be reading a good book and have a treat to eat with it? She saw the three of us, thought of the $$ in her pocket and made us a deal. Being the treat deprived children that we were, when she offered us the deal, it didn't even dawn on us to negotiate. We agreed to her terms and were off.

About 25 minutes later we were back at her bedside delivering the goods. We had run down to the local party store (that's what they were called in those days, not convenience stores) and bought her a whole 12 pack box of ice-cream sandwiches. She took the box, pulled out one measly ice cream sandwich that she split 3 ways for us and doled the sections out. We happily accepted the meager portion alloted to each of us and were on our merry way while she began to devour the first of the remaining eleven delights. Yes, you guessed the end of the story. She ate them all right there in one sitting, never leaving the comfort of her book and bed.

Can you even believe we settled for so little? All for a bite of ice cream sandwich!