The other day Ben came home with a form of ice cream that contains frozen chocolate chip cookie dough. I'm not really a fan of it as I find it too grainy, but I ate a few bites anyway, just to be sure. Indeed I was standing up at the time, leaning against the kitchen counter. As the chilled grainy dough hit my tongue, I had a Proustian moment of recollection. I was transported back to December 3rd, 1980, my friend Nina's fifteenth birthday.
We were I think in Roseville, Minnesota, at a mall called Rosedale (all the Twin City area malls at that time ended with "dale"), awaiting our fencing tournament. She and I were on the Marshall-U High fencing team together, perhaps drawn to it by the interesting gear and the security blanket of its unfamiliarity among our peers. If we sucked it, it would be a lot harder to tell. Anyway, it was Nina's birthday and she declared that the fitting celebration would be to eat a roll of frozen chocolate chip cookie dough in one sitting, and follow that up with smoking a cigar. I thought this proposal over briefly, using my 14-year-old skills of reason, and immediately decided that it was an excellent plan.
Somehow in the mall we found both the items we needed. We sat down on a bench and peeled the dough and gnawed off chomps of it, passing it back and forth like a joint. Grainy! Cold and bland, yet sweet, yet not at all chocolatey. The worst part though was the heaviness of it, the way all that frozen dough landed in the stomach and sat there in gray leaden rawness.
Then the cigar. The one we purchased was by far the largest and cheapest one available and it took only a puff or two to recognize that this was leading nowhere good. I'm sure we didn't make it to puff number three before we both were green. Fortunately it was about time for us to fence.
As you may know, competitive fencing requires one to be light on the feet, strong, lithe, and lightening fast. Nothing about our training regimen before the match provided us with any of those qualities. I think it was pure luck that I managed not to vomit in my fencing helmet. I also think that I was eliminated from competition in about 35 seconds. Nina, taller and a more experienced a fencer, may have lasted a minute or two. And then we were benched again, to sit there clasping our stomachs, waiting through many more matches until the bus would take us back to school.
It's December 3rd again– this time, judging by the fact that I'm 41, Nina must be 42. Happy birthday, Miss N! We are separated by thousands of miles, and yet close in spirit.