Blast from the Past

When I was a kid, we lived in San Diego because my dad was in the Navy. Sometimes we all had to get up early and take my dad to work, so my mom could have the car for shopping.

The best days were when we went to Mission Valley Shopping Center. We always went to Monkey Ward's, where my mom bought whatever it was she needed to get (probably boring things like socks and underwear for us), and if we behaved, we got to go out the back of Ward's to the Thrifty store and get a single-scoop ice cream cone for each of us. I think they were 10¢ a scoop at the time.

I loved those days.

So tonight I was wandering around a Rite-Aid I don't usually go to, but it was on the way home from Wal-Mart. And I saw these two girls, and one of them had a double-scoop ice cream cone. I asked if they got it there at the store, and they pointed to the front of the store, where a man was standing behind a glass partition. The girls said it used to be a Thrifty, and when Rite-Aid bought out Thrifty, they kept the ice cream counter, and the girls make sure to go to that Rite-Aid, because none of the others in the area have ice cream.

I went up there just to look at the ice cream (I don't want to jeopardize my 20-ish lb. weight loss by actually eating ice cream), and they took that moment to hand over duties to the new girl I had been chatting with in the back of the store after I complimented her on her sparkly hair clippies.

She served the couple in front of me (pistachio nut for the husband and black cherry for the wife), while I basked in the action of the cylinder-shaped scooping device that transported me back to Mission Valley's Thrifty store. When it was my turn, I just thanked her for the ice cream demo and told her I had some sugar-free, fat-free pudding waiting for me at home. Yum!

Some days come with moments of pure joy, even if those moments are only visual.