Ice Cream for Dinner

Well, I did a few firsts today but this is by far the more interesting to write about. I came back from swimming thirty and warm and not at all interested in making supper. But there was ice cream, and chocolate, and nuts, and caramel, and cones. An out later I had finished my feast of might-as-well-not-gone-swimming-at-all licking my fingers and wondering what was for dessert.

My mother once told me about one morning when she was a teenager waking up and feeling like chocolate cake for breakfast. "Why don't you?" my aunt asked. I guess Mom didn't have a good reason not to and so she had a breakfast of chocolate cake and milk.

It reminds me of The Outsiders  by S. E. Hinton. 

The first one up has to fix breakfast and the other two do the dishes. That's the rule around our house, and usually it's Darry who fixes the breakfast and me and Soda who are left with the dishes. I hunted through the icebox and found some eggs. We all like eggs done differently. I like them hard, Darry likes them in a bacon-and-tomato sandwhich, and Sodapop east his with grape jelly. All three of us like chocolate cake for breakfast. Mom had never allowed it with ham and eggs, but Darry let Soda and me talk him into it. We really didn't have to twist his arm; Darry loves chocolate cake as much as we do. Sodapop always makes sure there's some in the icebox every night and if there isn't he cooks one up real quick. I like Darry's cakes better; Sodapop always puts too much sugar in the icing. I don't see how he stand jelly and eggs and chocolate cake all at once, but he seems to like it. Darry dinks black coffee, and Sodapop and I drink chocolate milk. We could have coffee if we wanted it, but we like chocolate milk. All three of us are crazy about chocolate stuff. Soda says if they ever make a chocolate cigarette I'll have it made.

The Outsiders was the first book I ever read twice, and S.E. Hinton was the first author of whom I read her complete works and this scene was one of the most memorable for me. I first read The Outsiders when I was 14, Phonyboy, the protagonist, is also 14 and S.E.Hinton was just a teenager (16 I think) when it was published. I was a budding writer and the idea that a teenager author (a girl about my age, mind you) had been published and her first book was being studied in school - well, that was like magic to my mind.

Tonight, while I ate my ice cream dinner, I remembered S.E. Hinton and the magic of being 14 and thinking I too could have a book published and read. It might have been the best dinner I've had in long while.