"Cone of Sloppiness"

By Jerry Zezima

You scream, I scream, we all scream for …

Beer!

Well, I do when the grandkids aren’t around. But when they are, we all scream for ice cream. My screaming happens when I eat it too fast and get brain freeze, which I would get even if I were marooned on the blistering sands of the Sahara Desert without food, water or a heaping cone of vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles.

This year’s ice cream season officially began on a sunny Saturday. After Old Man Winter was finally run out of town and took his sleet, mittens and sinus infections with him, I drove two of my granddaughters to a shop called Magic Fountain for frosty treats that go straight to the sweet tooth if you are a kid and straight to the waistline if you are an adult.

“What do you girls want?” I asked as we stood in a long line outside.

They looked over the extensive menu printed on a large board, where an excited bunch of other kids had congregated while their parents (and one grandparent) held their place in line, but it didn’t matter because they had already made up their minds.

“I want a cup of cake mix with rainbow sprinkles,” said one granddaughter, who’s 12.

When she was 4, she and I went to Magic Fountain (“Where Ice Cream Dreams Come True!”) to make a batch of honey-cinnamon with the owner.

My granddaughter helped pour a bottle of honey into a plastic container. She also helped pour eight ounces of ground cinnamon into a measuring cup and dump the ingredients into the container. Then she squeezed in a bag of ice cream mix and helped turn on the machine.

When the ice cream was done 20 minutes later, my granddaughter tasted it and exclaimed, “Wow!”

“Now,” said the very kind and patient owner, “you can say you taught your grandfather how to make ice cream.”

“I remember that,” said my granddaughter, who didn’t want to make ice cream this time. “I just want to eat it.”

Her sister, then a baby and now 8, wanted a large mint chocolate chip milkshake with whipped cream.

“That cup is too big for you,” I said, pointing out that the plastic container’s contents could choke a water buffalo.

“No, it’s not,” the girl protested. “I can finish it.”

I placed both orders with a young woman behind the counter.

“What would you like?” she asked me.

“A vanilla soft serve cone,” I replied.

“What kind of cone?” she inquired.

“Anything but a traffic cone,” I said with a goofy grin.

She sighed, because it was really busy, and inquired further: “Wafer or waffle?”

I waffled before choosing wafer.

“Rainbow sprinkles?” she said.

“No, thanks,” I responded. “I’m driving.”

I paid at the register — $26.09 on a card, plus a nice tip in cold cash because the frazzled employee really deserved it — and grabbed a fistful of those wimpy little napkins that are sadly inadequate for wiping melted ice cream from the faces, and sometimes clothing, of sloppy patrons.

By that I mean grandfathers.

The girls and I sat outside on a bench and, in the strong spring sun, began slurping, sipping and slobbering our sweet treats.

Immediately my soft serve started to trickle over the top of my cone, so I had to lick the edges while inhaling the top of the creamy mound before it collapsed in an avalanche of goo.

“I can’t finish mine,” announced the younger girl, who had promised she could.

“I can’t finish mine, either,” said her sister.

I did finish mine, used every napkin in my possession to clean up the mess on all three of us and walked back to the car with the girls.

“Let’s come back tomorrow!” the older one said.

“Yeah!” her sister agreed. “But Poppie,” she said to me, “you have to stop telling silly jokes or you’ll never get any rainbow sprinkles.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"How to Be Walked by Your Dog"

By Jerry Zezima

I may be barking up the wrong tree, but as a human who has been owned by several canines, I am in a good position — standing, running or being yanked in several directions at once — to pass along my expert tips on walking a dog.

Tip No. 1: You do not walk a dog. The dog walks you.

I have been reintroduced to this pet project since Opal, a sweet yet frenetic Chihuahua pup, was adopted by my younger daughter and her family, which includes her husband and their daughters, ages 12 and 8, who are older than Opal in dog years and not nearly as active.

Unlike most people, including yours truly, dogs love to get exercise. And they are smart enough not to do it at a gym, which costs money the dogs don’t have.

That’s why dogs keep in shape by running crazily around the house or going for walks outside. Both require the participation of humans, who over the past several centuries have been domesticated to the point where they are, as far as interspecies relationships are concerned, a dog’s best friend.

Like my previous dogs — Daisy from boyhood, Lizzie from fatherhood and Maggie from grandfatherhood — Opal has GPS: Global Pooch System. This directs her to wherever she wants to go, including places where she, yes, wants to go.

Tip No. 2: When a dog does its business, a human must stand at one end of the leash and pretend not to notice what is happening at the other end.

This is a very important rule because you don’t want to embarrass the dog, who couldn’t care less but lets you think your unwanted attention is somehow interfering with the expulsion of whatever was ingested — treats, rocks, grass, another dog’s droppings — earlier in the day.

Tip No. 3: Always carry a doggy bag. Not the kind you get from a restaurant, silly human, but one specifically designed to help you pick up after your pooch.

Ideally, these slippery plastic bags should be as agonizingly difficult to open as those found in grocery stores. Compounding the problem is that your dog, having finished fertilizing a neighbor’s lawn, will try to pull you down the road while you are fumbling futilely with the pungent deposit.

“Woof woof!” the dog will bark. (Translation: “Hurry up!”)

“Just a minute!” you will invariably reply. (Translation: Can’t be printed in a family newspaper.)

Tip No. 4: Be prepared to stop and smell the flowers.

You have already smelled something much worse, so why not nature’s beauties? That’s what your dog believes. If he or she is not familiar with a neighborhood, the dog will stop approximately every eight feet to sniff bushes, eat grass or otherwise learn the lay of the land.

When Opal visited our house recently, my wife and I took her for a walk with her human sisters, also known as our granddaughters. I was the walker and soon found myself hopelessly behind the others while Opal inspected virtually every square inch of a five-block area.

The entire Super Bowl broadcast didn’t take as long.

Tip No. 5: Be prepared to sprint and suffer permanent injuries.

If a dog is on its home turf, he or she will already have stopped a million times on previous walks and will want to race you in a 100-yard dash. This will result in: (a) the dislocation of your shoulder, (b) myocardial infarction or (c) a face-plant with gravel up your nose.

On a recent visit to Opal’s house, we went for a walk with the girls, one of whom rode her bike and the other who rode her scooter. Lacking opposable thumbs and long enough legs for pedaling, Opal ran hither and yon, attorneys at law, while I tried to keep up without running headlong into a tree, a stop sign or an oncoming vehicle.

So there you have it, fellow humans. I hope these tips will help you enjoy your walks because neither rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night will keep your dog from its appointed rounds.

As Opal would say if she could talk, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima

"Pillow Talk"

By Jerry Zezima

Everyone knows that heat rises. Everyone also knows that I am full of hot air. Therefore, you could say with scientific certainty that I am an airhead.

But you would be wrong. That’s because, according to a respected sleep specialist, my head doesn’t get sufficient air.

That was the alarming finding in a sleep study I can’t fully remember because: (a) the oxygen level in my brain was low and (b) I was asleep.

“Losing air during sleep puts pressure on the brain,” Dr. Mohammad Amin told me during a meeting in his office.

“I didn’t think I had much brain activity to begin with,” I said.

“You have a good brain,” Dr. Amin assured me. “And a smart body.”

“Does that mean my backside is more intelligent than my cranium?” I wondered.

“No, it means that during the sleep study, you shifted positions so you could be more comfortable,” the good doctor said as he showed me a printout of the results.

Not surprisingly, I couldn’t make head or tail of them.

Listed under Patient Data was information about Recording Time (468.5-493.1 minutes), Total Sleep Time (339-372.9 minutes), Stage N3 (73 minutes) and Stage REM (39 minutes).

“REM is deep sleep,” Dr. Amin explained. “Most of your sleep during the study was shallow.”

“Is that because the bed wasn’t too high off the floor?” I inquired.

He looked at me like I still wasn’t getting sufficient oxygen to my brain.

“Your sleep was interrupted by a breathing problem,” Dr. Amin said as he went over Respiratory Data.

Then he discussed Body Position.

“Do you know what your favorite position was?” he asked.

“Centerfield?” I guessed.

“It was your left side,” he said. “You also spent time on your right side, though you began by lying on your back.”

“I knew you would have my back,” I said.

“You switched positions throughout the night,” Dr. Amin told me.

Finally, we discussed Snores, the recordings of which were on a scale that looked, truthfully, like a polygraph.

“The highest decibel was 8,” he said. “Yours was 2, which is not bad.”

“My wife would disagree,” I countered.

“The big concern is lack of oxygen,” Dr. Amin said. “It puts pressure on your brain and heart.”

He elaborated by saying I had PVC.

“I know,” I said. “The fence in our front yard is PVC.”

“The kind I’m talking about is Premature Ventricular Contraction,” the doctor said. “It affects the heart, which doesn’t like low oxygen.”

“What do you recommend?” I asked.

“You should get a CPAP machine,” he said, referring to a device that treats sleep apnea. 

“Is that what I have?” I inquired.

“Yes,” Dr. Amin said. “You have a moderate case. With the CPAP, your snoring will go away and your heart and brain will be much happier with good oxygen.”

He added that the machine, which used to be bulky, isn’t much larger than a clock radio.

“You can put it on the nightstand next to your bed,” the doctor said, adding that I would be hooked up to it with a mask and tubing.

“Won’t it bother my wife?” I asked.

“Not at all,” Dr. Amin answered. “Right now, what bothers her the most?”

“My stupid jokes,” I said.

“How about snoring?” he said.

“That, too,” I conceded. “My wife devised what she calls a snore shield. She stands a pillow between us like a wall.”

“Does it work?” Dr. Amin asked.

“Not at all,” I answered.

“The CPAP will fix the problem,” he promised.

“Will it prevent me from telling stupid jokes?” I wondered.

“No,” Dr. Amin said. “Maybe you can invent a machine for that.”

“You mean like a joke shield?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“OK,” I said. “I’ll sleep on it.”

Copyright 2025 by Jerry Zezima