By JODEE TAYLOR
The summer I was 16, I worked at Bardon's.
It was pretty much the perfect job -- I saw all my friends, I could walk or ride my bike there and there was ice cream. It was like my life at the time, except I got paid.
Still, I bolted after a few months to take a job with the forest service in the U.P. What can I say? I was 16 and ready to get out of Traverse City.
During the time I worked at Bardon's, however, I invented the Hot Fudge Marshmallow Milkshake.
My dad was always a chocolate milkshake kind of guy. He ordered them whenever we stopped at ice cream places and kept the blender on the kitchen counter so he could whip one up at home on a moment's notice. (I'll never forget the cross-country car trip we took one summer -- everyone should have one of those -- when I threw up my chocolate milkshake out the back of the station wagon. I still feel sorry for the people behind us.)
One day, I came home from Bardon's with a new tasty treat -- the Hot Fudge Marshmallow Milkshake. It's just what it sounds like -- ice cream, marshmallow sauce (or thinned Marshmallow Fluff if you're trying this at home) and hot fudge.
It's super-sweet, just like my dad, and he loved it. I brought one home after every shift from then on.
I didn't realize, however, that the Hot Fudge Marshmallow Milkshake would become a metaphor.
A few summers after that, my brother and his first girlfriend broke up. It was heartwrenching, as all first breakups are. My dad had a father-son talk with my brother at some point during the devastation and tried to reassure my brother that he would live through this.
"I thought chocolate milkshakes were the be-all-and-end-all in milkshakes," my dad told my brother. "Then the Hot Fudge Marshmallow Milkshake came along. And I liked it even more."
His point, of course, was that there are other women in the world, just like there are other milkshakes, and my brother would someday meet one of them and fall even more deeply in love and everything would be OK.
My dad was absolutely right, as usual. My brother met his Hot Fudge Marshmallow Milkshake in graduate school. They've been married almost 28 years.
To this day when we're feeling a little mischievous, we'll introduce her as "Beverly, Bruce's Hot Fudge Marshmallow Milkshake."
Turns out, I probably didn't invent that milkshake. You can order one wherever hot fudge, marshmallow sauce and ice cream are sold. But I have to claim some sort of legacy in this life, so I'll latch on to that one. It's pretty sweet.
Jodee Taylor can be reached at jtaylor@record-eagle.com.
