The Best Ice Cream (Store Bought)

Back when I was in college, and after I first lost all the weight (dropping from 270 to 170!), I had a ritual on Fridays my senior year. My classes ended at 11, and I didn't have to tutor on Fridays, so I had an unaccustomed amount of free time. I also had a little extra money (something that's really rare.) So I would go after class and get a copy of the then-afternoon local paper (a thicker edition than you'd see nowadays), then to the grocery store and a gyro place near my apartment. I'd pick up some ice cream at the grocery store and then let it soften while I'd eat my gyro and read the paper. Then I'd eat the pint of ice cream and go on with my day.

You have to remember that I could eat a pint of ice cream because back then I was running 5 or 6 miles a day (even though I smoked then) and so I could afford the 1300-or-so calories I'd get doing that. And the ice cream each week was the same: Ben & Jerry's "Wavy Gravy." If you've never had this ice cream, you wouldn't believe how good it is. Caramel, cashew, Brazil nuts, chocolate hazelnut fudge swirl, roasted almonds... my mouth is watering now. It was like eating Heaven. Literally. The mixture was impossible for me to describe, is impossible, except to say that it came together in a way that nobody could have anticipated and that, I guess, few could appreciate.

I did that almost every week for my senior year in college, and never looked back. All the extra running was worth it. At some point, though, Ben & Jerry stopped making it, and I fell out of the habit of eating a pint of ice cream at one sitting. I still thought about it, though. Some people will try to remember an old girlfriend, or go visit their old high school. I wondered about Wavy Gravy.

And last year, they opened a Ben & Jerry's shop in our city! We stopped there after a college football game and they had Wavy Gravy! And I got a cone of it and it was every bit, EVERY BIT as good as I remembered it. So it wasn't just the heady freedom of a Friday afternoon in college. It was the best ice cream ever. It IS the best ice cream ever. But they've only (apparently) brought it back on a temporary basis and only at the shop. Please, bring it back. And everyone in the world should go eat it.