为妈妈扮靓（4）（2/2）
《穿过爱的时光》作者：杨柳青 2017-01-24 02:12
to the known delights of chocolate or vanilla5 or whether to experiment with the exotic Rocky Road or Blueberry raged among us. But we each settled on something, and the man scooped large scoops into waffle cones and handed them out. We savored and devoured.
Then he asked Mrs. Knapp, “ What would you like?” I like to think there was a twinkle in his eyes as he did and that what followed was a ritual between them, although the few kids who’d attended Mrs. Knapp’s classes in years before hadn’t been to the stand.
She paused thoughtfully, then said, “ I think I’ll have a cone with a scoop of each.”
He didn’t bat an eyelash, but we did. A scoop of each? All ten flavors? In one cone? Mrs. Knapp, this woman who was smaller than the oldest of her students, was going to eat a ten-scoop ice cream cone?
With the same aplomb she displayed in the classroom, she took the mountain from him carefully and licked the top. She said something like“ Mmm” and smiled. And we watched, agog with envy, as she consumed every sweet mound, moving her tongue up and down from vanilla to strawberry to butter pecan, not losing a drop to the heat of the afternoon.
Afterward, we walked back to the school, perhaps just a mile or so away, packed up our things, said good-bye to her and each other, and walked home or waited for our parents to come.
Of course, I told my parents about the event, and, of course, they smiled. We drove past the school the following week. It was closed for the summer and Mrs. Knapp was off somewhere, with Mr. Knapp, I supposed, eating copious quantities of ice cream stacked in sky-high cones. I never saw her again, and though we looked, I never found that ice cream stand, either.
Now, fifty years later, though the little else I can recall about that first school year is only dimly remembered, Mrs. Knapp and her ten-scoop ice cream cone remains one of my clearest childhood memories. And often, as 1 watch children sitting in the sun outside modern twenty-or thirty-flavor ice cream emporiums, 1 wonder if perhaps she isn’t somewhere watching, a well-filled waffle cone in hand, still enjoying it mightily.
Then he asked Mrs. Knapp, “ What would you like?” I like to think there was a twinkle in his eyes as he did and that what followed was a ritual between them, although the few kids who’d attended Mrs. Knapp’s classes in years before hadn’t been to the stand.
She paused thoughtfully, then said, “ I think I’ll have a cone with a scoop of each.”
He didn’t bat an eyelash, but we did. A scoop of each? All ten flavors? In one cone? Mrs. Knapp, this woman who was smaller than the oldest of her students, was going to eat a ten-scoop ice cream cone?
With the same aplomb she displayed in the classroom, she took the mountain from him carefully and licked the top. She said something like“ Mmm” and smiled. And we watched, agog with envy, as she consumed every sweet mound, moving her tongue up and down from vanilla to strawberry to butter pecan, not losing a drop to the heat of the afternoon.
Afterward, we walked back to the school, perhaps just a mile or so away, packed up our things, said good-bye to her and each other, and walked home or waited for our parents to come.
Of course, I told my parents about the event, and, of course, they smiled. We drove past the school the following week. It was closed for the summer and Mrs. Knapp was off somewhere, with Mr. Knapp, I supposed, eating copious quantities of ice cream stacked in sky-high cones. I never saw her again, and though we looked, I never found that ice cream stand, either.
Now, fifty years later, though the little else I can recall about that first school year is only dimly remembered, Mrs. Knapp and her ten-scoop ice cream cone remains one of my clearest childhood memories. And often, as 1 watch children sitting in the sun outside modern twenty-or thirty-flavor ice cream emporiums, 1 wonder if perhaps she isn’t somewhere watching, a well-filled waffle cone in hand, still enjoying it mightily.