The Day I Broke The Ice Cream Scoop

“You broke the ice cream scoop,” my wife informed me. “What do you mean I broke the ice cream scoop?” “You broke the ice cream scoop.” “How could I break the ice cream scoop?” I replied. “There aren’t any moving parts.” “You broke the ice cream scoop. See?” She held it up to my face. It didn’t look any different. “You put it in the dishwater; it’s not supposed to soak in the dishwater.” And then I suddenly remembered – I was given explicit instructions that it must NEVER soak in the dishwater (by the way, we don’t have a dishwasher – they both grew up and moved out). So I asked, “Not supposed to soak in the dishwater….why not?” “There are special crystals in the handle?” “Special crystals in the handle?” “Yeah, hear that?” She shook the ice cream scoop and I could hear a sort of muffled 100-mile-away-sleighbells sound coming from the handle of the ice cream scoop. “Its not supposed to do that.” I dropped my head in shame and said, “Oh.” “When you shake it you shouldn’t hear anything. Now the crystals are ruined and it’s worthless.” I think I sarcastically asked her if they were dilytheum crystals – you know, the same stuff that Scotty used to run the starship Enterprise on Star Trek. She explained. It’s a different kind of ice cream scoop AND apparently fairly pricey (as in second mortgage kind of pricey). It’s made by that company (Pampered Really Good Cook) where people gather in secret meetings in someone’s home. Then the hostess demonstrates things like the “magic ice cream scoop” (wink, wink) and then the unsuspecting party-goers fork over wads of unmarked bills under the table for kitchen stuff that you just can’t live without. And instead of the old-fashioned ratcheting type this scoop has some sort of crystals in the handle that will conduct the 98.6 degree heat of your hand, double it through a process called scoop fusion (or maybe its scoop fission – I always get those two theories confused), and then apply that heat directly to the scoop part and cut through the hardest ice cream like, uh, well like a 197.2 degree piece of metal through ice cream. But IF YOU EVER SOAK IT IN DISHWATER its magical properties are gone. Forever gone. Apparently dishwater to this ice cream scoop is like kryptonite to Superman…its only weakness. And it appears that you can only get more magic crystals from the planet Crouton. She was right. I tried it. It was just a useless hunk of aluminum. I thought about hooking up jumper cables to it, waiting till it got red hot and then using it, but backing the car into the kitchen wasn’t an option (well of course you could take the ice cream to the car, but where’s the fun in that?). I so much just wanted to take that ice cream scoop out to the garage, drill a hole into the end of it and see what was in there, but I was afraid the garage might implode and get sucked into the handle. When I get to heaven one of my first questions will be, “Hey, how does that ice cream scoop work anyway?” “Its simple,” the chief chef angel of heaven will reply, “The same stuff that Kirk fought the Klingons over…dilytheum crystals. Why do you ask?” “Oh nothing really, just curious.” “You didn’t put it in the dishwater did you?”