Milkshakes!

Drinking milkshakes is a painful experience. This creamy concoction is wishfully served with a straw and yet, you’d have better luck baking a cake with a space heater. Anticipating your utter failure, the waiter will always bring you a spoon. And yet, I can never resist attempting to drink a shake the intended way: through a narrow, plastic tube. To actually succeed at this ordeal requires the resolve and endurance of a greasy politician contesting the presidential seat.

           

Now, once I’ve given up on these foolish pipe dreams, I pick up that spoon and scoop into the cold silk. While the worst milkshake amounts to nothing more than watered down ice cream and that pickled maraschino cherry slopped on top often holds less life than a cat floating in formaldehyde, the perfect shake is synecdoche for the perfect summer night spent taming the day’s sun burns with jokes among friends. It’s watching the freckles beginning to peel off a new love’s tender, maroon shoulders as your spoons clank together within the blooming glass cup that holds a sweetness between you. We trade smiles and spoon-fulls across the table, recounting tales of sun-basked triumphs. A milkshake is youth held frozen within velvety crystals. And the comfort it brings, the fragrant memories it conjures, is worth all the brain freezes.