She leans in toward me, her elbows on the counter. She is tall, blonde, and very slender. She’s wearing a tight black skirt and a white blouse open one button just past modest. A maid’s apron circles her waist. She begins to speak but I raise my hand and gesture for her to wait. I am listening to the teenage girl with the long legs and short shorts standing to the blonde’s left. She is a regular but, tonight, she wants more than usual.
“I want my pint of chocolate chip but I also need a cheese steak, to go and a regular hoagie without onions. They’re so busy at the sandwich counter, can’t you take my order?
Ever since making 
I’m quite sure it’s in the genes. I know I got the ice cream-loving gene from my dad who got the gene from his mom. It’s that gene that forces me to direct my husband miles out of our way just to visit an ice cream store that makes their own ice cream. That same gene has been known to cause cravings that send me to bed with a spoon and a pint of my favorite frozen cream. I can eat ice cream morning, noon and night and never get enough. I can’t help it – it’s in my genes.
It was a Pavlovian response. Not just the salivating and the excitement, but the begging my mother for coins, the heart- pounding fear I’d miss it, then the shrieking, running out to the street to see the white truck with the painting of the ice cream bar on the side cruising slowly down the hill.
