Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

This month marks the 7 year anniversary of my mint chocolate chip ice cream fiasco. I wrote this right before Brianna was born. Happy reading:)

I Scream for Ice Cream

I didn’t really crave anything during my pregnancy. Some days I liked food a lot, and other days I didn’t. But on one day in particular, I left work feeling the need to eat my favorite ice cream: Mint Chocolate Chip. It had been such a long time since I had any, that the idea seemed splendid on this very hot summer day in Georgia!

I drove home and decided to pick up a half gallon at the store a few minutes from my house. I was in my husband’s jeep wrangler with the top down, seven months pregnant, and sweating profusely in the heat! When I got out of the jeep, my back was literally soaked from the combination of leather seats and pregnancy. The idea of my favorite cold ice cream in this horrible weather immediately intensified my craving.

I walked into the store and ran to the freezer section. Brand by brand I searched each ice cream container for my mint chocolate chip. Nothing. I searched again. Nothing. How inconvenient!

Thankfully, opening the freezer cooled me off quite a bit, but I was getting a bit irritated. Oh well, I really really wanted mint chocolate chip, so I would just have to drive to another store.

Tired, pregnant, and hot, I managed to hobble into another store in search of my favorite ice cream. However, it was a play by play of my previous store experience. I couldn’t believe it. How can you have every ice cream flavor under the sun and NO mint chocolate chip? As if I didn’t want it bad enough before, suddenly I was on a mission, and frankly, not very happy about it.

I got back into the jeep in the sweltering heat and drove to yet another grocery store. The freezer section had become my worst enemy. My eyes scanned over each container, and I proceeded to dig deeper, thinking it must be behind something. The more I dug, the angrier I became.
Was it such a huge request? Can’t a huge sweaty pregnant woman be allowed to indulge in her cravings once in awhile? Must she settle for simple boring flavors such as vanilla or chocolate? WHERE WAS I? I’ll tell you where I was. I was in the South, and for a Northern girl such as myself, my surroundings suddenly became hostile. Certainly up North, I would never have experienced such outright rejection for a pregnant woman’s needs!
I became wild in my digging, and was suddenly approached by a young and timid store employee. He asked if there was anything he could help me with.
I said, “Yes, that would be nice. I need some mint chocolate chip ice cream please.” He looked in the freezer, and then said, “I’m sorry, it looks like we don’t have any.”

"WHAT?" I screamed in my head.
My voice quickly elevated and I replied, “I WANT TO SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER!”
“Yes Ma'am, please calm down and I'll go get him.”
“I would calm down if you had mint chocolate chip ice cream for me to purchase. But since you don’t, I want to speak with your manager, NOW.”

He went to get him, and I continued to try to cool myself down by standing in front of the open freezer doors. Suddenly the store manager approached. HE, who was responsible for my current unhappy and unsatisfied situation. I said to him, “I would like to purchase some mint chocolate chip ice cream. This is the third store I have gone into to purchase this item, and I would really appreciate it if you could give me some kind of decent explanation as to why you don’t have it?”

He stared at me and my belly for a moment, and then carefully approached the subject by saying, “I’m sorry mam. We don’t usually carry that flavor of ice cream here.”
“Here?” I replied. “Do you mean in this store, or do you mean in this God forsaken part of the country where I can’t manage to go into a single store and buy what I NEED right now. AM I IN AMERICA?”

He cautiously replied again saying, “Ma'am, please calm down. We don’t carry it in this store because there is not a large request for it. If you would like, I can put in an order and it will arrive next week”

I thought to myself, “Oh ya, what was I thinking? You people like collard green ice cream. My mistake.” (Totally untrue and ignorant… but I was new to the South and very pregnant...so please forgive me). Instead, I replied with a thank you and a, "well I should hope so!" and then hobbled my huge and hot self back out into the unquenchable and unforgiving sun.

I drove home, plopped myself down on my couch with a bag of chips and spaghetti-Os, and ate until I couldn’t any more. I felt completely disappointed, completely unsatisfied, and completely pregnant. Yet somehow, I managed to find consolation in the fact that next week at the Piggly Wiggly, my mint chocolate chip ice cream would be waiting...just for me.