There are a few things that have been bothering me as of late: a wild, unsupported argument for shouting a rhyme, and a guy who decided (on a whim, I suppose) to tell me how he’d kill someone with a spoon.
A few months ago I ran across a passage in a literature book that had the audacity to propose that simply speaking of a delicacy would give the speaker the same exact pleasure as if he or she had actually tasted the food. Although I am no culinary linguist, I will stand by my conviction that uttering the words “smooth, rich, gourmet-renowned, crunchy, delicious wafers” does not compare at all to sinking one’s teeth into a savory Necco coin. What’s even more preposterous than a claim of such nature is the example the book gives for one:
I scream, you scream
We all scream
For ice cream.
These lines are an exuberant evocation of the joy of ice cream. Indeed, chanting the words turns out to be as pleasurable as eating ice cream.The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 6th Edition, Page 675
ISBN: 0312259182
At best, we can assume that the author, Michael Meyer, is making an obscure reference to self-induced hypnosis. But on a hot day, surrounded by a bunch of grody kids incessantly chanting an irksome rhyme, nothing compares to an actual bowl of ice cream.
For the record, these are ice creams I like:
- Peanut buttery ice creams
- Caramel-drenched ice creams
- Not-almond’ed ice creams
- DONT FORGET THAT I MIGHT ALSO ENJOY HAVING BALLOONS FILLED WITH ICE CREAM AT MY NEXT BIRTHDAY PARTY. They would be fun and delicious to pop. I would bite them with my mouth.
But I can live amongst such ice-cream lunacy. The events surrounding lunch yesterday, however, sent shivers down my spine. As I was standing in line, as I am apt to do, a guy whom I have only briefly seen struck up a conversation with me.
“Hey,” he began, addressing me without any emotion whatsoever.
“Oh, hey.”
He was standing on top of a broken plastic spoon. A portion of the bowl had snapped off, and what remained was a jagged mess of utensil.
“You could kill someone with that,” he said, motioning to the spoon.
“Yeah, uh, I guess you could, huh?”
“I would do it like this,” he stated, demonstrating in a sort of thrust how he might murder someone with a spoon. “Or like this.” This time he had both of his hands in a fist, one on top of the other, and made a stabbing movement towards his neck. “Then I would tear out their throat.” At this, I turned away with a feeling of absolute terror in my heart.