Thoughts on a banana split?
Hello.
This is the first thing on my website.
Recently, I was celebrating my sobriety from alcohol (something I may or may not talk about later) and I decided to get ice cream at a small local shop. The menu was overwhelming and the font was way too small, yellow text on blue background, and it reminded me I need to schedule an eye doctor appointment. Eventually my eyes settled on the sundaes. At the bottom was the banana split: one scoop of each chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream topped with chocolate, caramel, and strawberry syrups, pineapple, strawberries, peanuts, whipped cream, and cherries. All held together by a fresh banana sliced in half longways. I only hesitated for a moment after I saw it because I used to work at the local Dairy Queen in my hometown for two years. I manned the drive-thru, made blizzards, and took custom orders. It wasn't the worst job I've ever had (which was working at SweetGreen, or maybe as a waitress at Applebees) but anything past a regular blizzard order made me roll my eyes. I think I made like $10 an hour there. So I knew what I was doing when I ordered it, and I stared blankly at the face of the teenager in front of me, who looked like I had just used a slur. In a sort-of strained customer service voice she asked if I wanted "everything on it", and I nodded. She quickly spun away and started pulling out the various ingredients, checking bananas to find one that wasn't bruised. I realize that a banana split is an unorthodox order, but this is an ice cream shop. When she asked me if I wanted "everything on it", her tone and posture was almost taunting. She was prompting me to add something, make it harder, or to reconsider and make it easier, maybe. I watched silently as she pulled each of the three containers of ice cream out one by one, rinsed the spoons, and looked around for all the misplaced sauces with physical annoyance. I wondered if she thought that I was doing this on purpose, making her life more difficult than it needs to be. I wondered if she thought I was an inconsiderate person who was sent into this shop by God to hurt her. I started to think that maybe I should’ve just gotten a scoop of chocolate with a topping like the people in front of me. She huffed as she opened and closed the freezer and the line became longer and I stood at the cash register, embarrassment growing with each ringing bell of the door opening. I notice these sorts of social situations are happening more and more often. The last few years have eroded a lot of boundaries, and it feels like oftentimes everyone is daring the Other to cross the line, or better yet, to give them justification for crossing it first. I’ve been in professional and social situations where I am acutely aware that the other person is bluffing, or lying to save face. What do you really have to gain from pointing any of this out, by acting out your awareness? When I am presented with the IPad tip screen I just press a random number anyway. When I worked at Dairy Queen, they had just advertised their new blizzard policy: workers would flip each blizzard upside down to prove that it was mixed well, and if we failed to do it, your next blizzard was free. It has been the Dairy Queen signature move for a while, but the advertisement felt more like a challenge that summer. In the middle of a busy rush, if you saw a sixteen year old covered in ice cream and she didn’t flip your blizzard, were you going to stop her from ringing up the kids behind you and demand your coupon? The answer was usually no, because it was never that serious. People don’t usually get ice cream when they’re in a shitty mood. And people weren’t all in a shitty mood all the time back then like they are now.
The thing is, I just wanted a banana split. I wasn’t trying to engage in a pressure test. I was not in a bad mood or engaging in a hit-job. I was feeling grateful and proud of myself that night. So, when she handed the banana split to me, I gasped like a girl and smiled really big and said “wow this is awesome, thank you so much,” while turning the creation around to admire it. It was beautiful, and carefully made, it looked just like the pictures. This reaction softened her and she let out a small laugh as the other customers started to look over and smile while I showed it off. It was a nice resolution to what I thought felt like an uncomfortable encounter. While I was drinking heavily, I didn’t go out in public often. I didn’t really go to bars, or out to eat, so it's possible that I was fixated with her body language; maybe I was projecting her annoyance as I reminisced on my high school part-time job. But I’m not usually wrong about subtle things like this. I’m not a crazy person or anything, I just wanted a banana split, so I put five dollars in the cash tip jar and made a little show of taking a photo of it, thanked her again, and left.
