I Scream; You Scream

There’s an art to eating an ice-cream cone.

I love to watch how people attack the process of ingesting a cone filled with a substance that melts at a rate just a few seconds faster than one’s ability to consume it. There seems to be a contest or race to see if one can lick up every single drip before it spills over onto the cone, or worse, one’s hands, shirt, lap etc.

My least favorite way to eat an ice-cream cone, and my husband’s favorite, is the open-mouthed munch. Hold cone upright, open mouth wide and bite down into the ice cream as deep as one’s teeth allow. I can feel the instant brain freeze as I type this. My teeth are not suitable for being submerged into freezing substances without howling in pain.

I could never eat an ice-cream cone in the same manner I would eat corn-on-the cob, but it is one common method of cone consumption I’ve noticed in my exhaustive studies on the subject.

I have also noticed that few women attack a cone in this manner, but it does seem to be a favorite of the male cone-eaters.

My second least favorite way to eat an ice-cream cone, or see someone eat a cone this way, is the” tongue out/cone spin” style. Open mouth, let tongue extend as long as that little sucker can protrude, hold cone at a 45 degree angle and spin it over the surface of the tongue…round and round and round. Once in a while, it is necessary to pack down the top of the ice-cream scoop until it flattens --usually three or four tongue taps will do, then quickly tongue out as far as possible and start the spinning again.

People who eat ice-cream cones in the tongue/spin method seem more tense than the average cone eater. They have a job to do, and they must do it quickly and efficiently. I wonder if the tonguers taste the ice cream at all or if it’s just neatness that counts?

The head bob/tongue flicker method of eating an ice-cream cone seems to be typically a female style of cone eating. Holding the cone upright, the head bobs up and down upon the cone, with the smallest of pink triangular tongue flicking at the ice cream, holding only a small dollop of ice cream per flicker. Cone rotation is done slowly and only when one side of the ice-cream scoop seems close to becoming concave and therefore structurally unsound.

The side-show of ice-cream cone-eating methods is the cone swallower.

This person attempts to insert as much of the ice-cream cone as is humanly possible into the biggest, “say ah” mouth they can physically create. Simultaneously, as they turn their mouths into an open O reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, they press the cone up and into their mouths, attempting to surround the circumference of the ice-cream scoop with their mobile stretched lips.

These people are fun to watch. Like the tonguers they have unique abilities that the average person doesn’t have. They can unhinge their jaws, I think, in order to accept all of the ice-cream scoop in one open-mouthed swoop.

In the “born-to-lose,” ice-cream-cone-eater category are those people that experience the compulsion to bite off the end of the cone. Why do they do this? They are going along eating their cone, in whatever manner they’ve chosen and as if god whispered “ do it now” in their ear, they raise it up and bite off the bottom…setting up a gravitational dripping of the ice cream that keeps them licking furiously from top to bottom.

Also in this category is the tongue-thruster. This person uses their tongue to push into the ice-cream often catapulting the ice-cream scoop off onto the pavement, the car seat, their shoes, etc. while they seem quite confused as to how this could have possible occurred.

When I’m at an ice-cream shop, I forego the cone for a sundae. I’ve never been able to master a single cone-eating style that works for me. Plus I’m addicted to the cherry on the top.