Scooper and Schmee

Another pair of prose pieces for you. First up, a work by senior Taylore Aussiker, whose freshman class was the last to be taught by long-time English Department member David Dwyer before his retirement in 2006. She marks the occasion with this essay.

All a Bunch of Schmee!

There is a word in my vocabulary that exists in the vocabularies of many of my classmates, a word that is not easily defined, but that holds so much meaning that each of us has to smile when we hear it. We learned the word—“schmee”—our freshman year in Mr. Dwyer’s English class. He told us the word had no tangible definition, but that it just meant, “It was all schmee!” And every year since then, each one of us has found a use for the word in our daily lives, though none of us can truly define it.

Dwyer’s class was chaotic. We looked forward to English every day, wondering what scheme he would come up with next. He once shut off the lights and told us to be very quiet, because we were going to make a secret trip to Carmen’s Ice Cream Parlor through a trap door under the English building. We all laughed nervously, unsure whether he might actually be serious or not. He looked at us and said, with his unique, shifty smile, “I can only say that to this class because in any other class I know there would be some kid searching every square inch for that trap door.”

Every day was a crazy, stand-up Dwyer-style comedy routine. We always found ourselves calmed and stress-free after his class. We watched all our cares fly out his window as we became a close-knit family of students.

Once on a vocabulary quiz he asked us to define “schmee” for extra credit. We all gave some sort of outlandish definition and had a good laugh over it. Of course it was not the actual word that held the meaning, but what it represented. It was a noise that made us think of Dwyer, the way the theme song to a favorite show relaxes you. It was all a bunch of schmee, a jumbled mess that somehow made the most sense to us out of our entire school day.

The other day, while reminiscing the good old days of freshman year, I realized the word “schmee” will disappear from Lyndon Institute’s vocabulary once my class graduates. Dwyer retired after our freshman year; no other class has experienced “schmee” the way we have. It’s our own inside joke, reminding us all of the crazy, relaxing chaos of Dwyer’s class, reminding us that Dwyer taught us much more than academics.

Speaking of Carmen's Ice Cream Parlor...We follow up the Schmee with a rather funny piece by Mira Davis, who reflects on her recent employment at the famous local spot. Ah, the life of a scoop.

“I said RAINBOW jimmies, not PURPLE!”

My boss rolled her eyes, gave me an exasperated glance before looking at the ice cream in my hand as if it was not ice cream at all but a giant dung beetle. Then she turned and—in a soft, silky, high-pitched girly voice—oh-so-daintily told the woman ordering that it would be “just a second more.” She followed it up with a Hollywood smile, trying to distract this agitated woman from the fact that I had messed up her ice cream order and that she would have to wait another five minutes at least.

Ice cream hasn’t been around forever, but very close to forever. The legend is that the Roman emperor Nero would send his slaves to nearby mountains to collect snow and ice. By flavoring the ice he made what we call now Italian ice, but which became ice cream. The first written account of ice cream in America was in the early 1700’s when George Washington evidently stuffed his face full of the desert during a dinner with the Governor of Maryland. Since then, ice cream has been an international sign of America, the leader in consumption of the cold dessert (the average American consumes around 23.3 quarts a year) and the inventor of some of its most absurd flavors, including—but not limited to—avocado, garlic, adzuki bean, jalapeño, and pumpkin.

Scooping ice cream is not for the weak-hearted. It is for the elite few willing to conquer not only the soft serve and hard ice creams, but the rainbow colored sprinkles that go on top. You must gain a thorough knowledge of all things cold and sweet, and above all be able to put on a pretty smile and yell into a crowd of hungry civilians “Large Peanut Butter Caramel Cookie Dough?” as if you know exactly what you are talking about.

When becoming an ice cream scooper you must first break all those habits that are fine when getting ice cream at home, but which scare the general public you are serving. Take, for instance, finger licking. Of course you lick your fingers when you have something sweet and tasty on them. Right? No, actually you don’t. Evidently it freaks people out when you touch their food with fingers they just saw you lick. God knows why.

Other bad habits to break include picking, scratching, or rubbing your face, touching your hair, and coughing into your hands. Another bad habit is gum chewing, which I learned the hard way when I spit my gum out once at an unfortunate costumer while trying to explain to her the intricacies of double fudge supreme. She shrank back in revulsion from the wad lying on the counter in front of her.

Ice cream is not all fun and games, mind you, and most employees have nightmares some time during their first week. These dreams vary from person to person, of course, but they all share common flavors: ice cream melting everywhere, cones constantly breaking, making the wrong change. Ice cream, as I said, is not for the weak-hearted. It is a way of life, and you must accordingly plan your life around it.

“Ma’am, your double hot fudge sundae.”

I give the woman a smile and hand her the ice cream. And even though I realize I’m probably handing her enough calories to last someone twelve days, it makes me happy to see her smile—this ice cream is the solution, can make all her problems go away, if only for the brief minutes it will take her to devour it. It is good to know you can make someone happy, whether it is for five minutes or an entire day. And this is why I scoop ice cream—Giffords, Starbucks, Ben and Jerry’s, it doesn’t really matter. That smile is why I serve.