Why I Called It Ice Cream Headache
As spring arrives, I find myself thinking about that day again. It comes back the way these things often do this time of year—not as a full memory, but in fragments. The softness in the air. The way the light lingers a little longer in the afternoon. The sense, even as a kid, that something was beginning again. It was the spring of 1967. After school. I was nine. I was sitting in the Supreme Dairy Bar, in the small midwestern town of Oglesby, Illinois, having a milkshake. He was a regular there. One of those men who seemed to belong to the place as much as the counter or the stools. I didn’t know his name. I don’t think I ever did. But he was always there, or at least it felt that way. And he said to me, “Kid, don’t drink that milkshake too fast. You’ll get an ice cream headache.” That was all. At the time, it didn’t seem like anything more than a small kindness. The kind of thing people said to each other without thinking. No lesson attached. N...
