Ice cream parlors draw kids and families. It's a fact of life, and it's something I'm prepared to handle when I want ice cream. Particularly the really good variety of local stuff.
However, tonight when Boyfriend and I hit up the local ice cream parlor (me: GIVE ME ICE CREAM! *bite* him: OW! Okay! Okay! Let me get to a save point!) we were confronted by this one particular family that I literally could not tear my eyes away from. In the interests of amusing myself at the expense of no-doubt-very-nice and unsuspecting people, I hereby dub them the Pig Family. There was Disgruntled Dad Pig, Tired Mom Pig, and their three children: School Bully Piglet, Gotta Keep Movin' On Piglet, and The Most Unfortunate Piglet In The World.
Dad and Mom were both incredibly solid columns of fat and muscle. You know the ones. Mom has no curves whatsoever but she looks like she could dent a train; Dad has all the curve in the family, consisting of one very round beer belly. Both Dad and Mom had that unfortunate 'jowl' condition, making their cheeks very round and prominent, until their noses and mouths almost vanished in the folds.
But the kids! School Bully Piglet looked like Dad: crew cut, tiny mean piggy little eyes, stocky body that'll turn to fat in ten years, and those same fleshy jowls. School Bully Piglet spent most of the visit to the ice cream parlor wandering around kicking walls, kicking benches, kicking trash cans, and so on. I was silently hoping he'd go try and kick one of the geese by the lake and get the crap pecked out of him for it. Well, 'hoping' is too strong a word, really. But if it had happened, I can guarantee I wouldn't have felt too sorry for him.
Gotta Keep Movin' On Piglet was actually the most normal-looking of the bunch, stocky, but without those pudgy little jowls. And rather normal-looking Gotta Keep Movin' On knew it, because he spent the entire time trying to put as much distance between himself and his family as he possibly could before his mother snapped at him. Gotta Keep Movin' On would be fifty feet away playing with the geese, or thirty feet away in the parking lot, or ten feet away trying to blend in with another family; given headway, Gotta Keep Movin' On could have made Kentucky by nightfall. And there, perhaps, he could have been free! Free!
And then, there was The Most Unfortunate Piglet In The World. She was about four, I suppose. And she was stocky, oh yes, with arms and legs like overstuffed sausage casings, so pudgy that she had some trouble putting her arms down by her sides. Tired Mom Pig (or maybe Disgruntled Dad Pig, but I doubt it) had put her in a charming little sleeveless patchwork jumper to highlight these tubesteaks of flesh.
And Unfortunate Piglet had Mom and Dad's jowls, yes she did, but hers were like a football cut in half and glued to her already perfectly round face, making her head of a size that threatened to pitch her over on her face at any moment. To make it worse, from somewhere she'd managed to pick up a startling case of rosacea (or something like it), because said football halves were dyed a brilliant, startling, unfading red. Between her reddened jowls she had no nose that I could discern, just two little pig-like nostrils gaping like black holes in a turned-up bit of flesh that might have been a pug nose. And to top it all off she had a head of Shirley Temple curls in an astonishing butterscotch yellow.
The Most Unfortunate Piglet In The World looked like nothing so much as an overgrown Cabbage Patch Kid, and let me tell you, that is a frightening thing to be faced with.
When Boyfriend and I first ran across the Pig Family, they were in line in front of us. Mom Pig was carefully cross-examining the hapless counter help about what kind of things her litter might like to eat, and finally decided that they should get the chocolate bundt cakes with ice cream on top of them. Meanwhile, School Bully Piglet was wandering around kicking the counter, Gotta Keep Movin' On Piglet was standing over on the far side of the parlor looking at the posters, and The Most Unfortunate Piglet In The World was clinging to Mommy's leg while she picked her nose and wiped the results on Mommy's pants.
Finally, after having acquired enough ice cream, cake, and assorted scoops of goopy stuff to kill a lesser family stone dead, the Pig Family relocated itself outside. While Mom and Dad poked tiredly at ice cream they didn't seem to be very interested in, School Bully Piglet wolfed his down and threw the empty bowl on the ground, Gotta Keep Movin' On Piglet grabbed his and scampered off to eat it next to a different family, and The Most Unfortunate Piglet In The World proceeded to attempt to eat hers via osmosis: smearing the ice cream on her face, hands, arms, hair, and cute little patchwork jumper, and occasionally being startled to find a dollop of it actually finding its way into her mouth.
Boyfriend and I quickly finished up our ice cream and wandered back to our car, leaving the Pig Family to their not-entirely-happy family outing. I don't know what he was thinking, but all the way there (accompanied for at least ten feet by Gotta Keep Movin' On) I was silently thinking, not me. Not me. As the gods are my witness, that will never be me. When I wish to have ice cream, I will have ice cream, and I will eat my ice cream in peace and quiet, with Boyfriend, and without a single child to my name. And we may be Pigs together, but I'll be Mama Pig to none.
Replies: add your comment: currently 7 comments
Unfortunate Piglet has hope yet! I used to be a real porker. I mean, huge. I was a Big. Child. Tubesteak arms and all. My legs were like tree trunks, and when I sat down it looked like someone left a huge Hershey's kiss on the floor.
And now I am a sexah mutha. Ahem. [/ego]
Point being, SHE HAS HOPE!
Posted by Moonshine @ 06/30/2002 08:39 PM EST
Boy, I think I know the kind of family this is....Yes, how unfortunate. You know, in some ways, you WANT to feel sorry for all of them, but you know you're not going to. Heh...It's a shame there are people like this....
I hope this never becomes me either. Not that I fear it will, but still, I wish it not.
Posted by Wolf @ 06/30/2002 10:21 PM EST
....that...is odd. The Unfortunate Piglet sounds...well, unfortunate. But yay for her wiping boogers on her mother...it sounds like some bizarre subconscious revenge.
She was probably traumatised whilst a fetus.
Posted by Rae @ 07/01/2002 07:40 AM EST
My God, I may never eat ice cream again... T_T
Posted by Meriko @ 07/01/2002 10:21 AM EST
Oh, gosh, I know where this is coming from. I used to *work* at an ice cream parlor (no pity, please, I've gone on to greener pastures), and these people are the same ones that come in three times a week and let their kids destroy the store three times a week. Though, the parents usually looked so miserable that I couldn't muster enough anger to be properly irate with them.
Posted by ling @ 07/02/2002 05:16 AM EST
"...kill a lesser family stone dead..."
Moon, you're evil. Do you know how hard it is to stifle a laugh that big at work? Do you?
Posted by Nezumi @ 07/02/2002 11:26 AM EST
I thought I was supposed to be the evil one, for some reason.
Posted by Nathan @ 07/02/2002 08:34 PM EST
