Salvage!

I am a calm person. I am always the Good Cop, the gentle yin to the raging yang.


But not last week.


"My god," said my wife. "I've never seen you so angry."


And I was quite angry. Angrier than I have been since I made myself stop caring about the stupid Eagles so my blood pressure would not blow off the top of my skull when they mismanaged the clock or blew another lead with stupid interceptions. (See, it's working!)


(UPDATE: I wrote that on Thursday. Well before the Eagles blew another fourth quarter lead with bad clock management and stupid turnovers. No, Andy Reid, it was not a bad idea at all to have an offensive line coach run your defense.)


And what made me so angry? Did someone besmirch my wife's honor? Did someone spit on the flag? Did someone tell a young child that Santa Claus was a spiteful drunk and that Christmas was to be cancelled? Did Andy Reid waddle into my line of sight?

Sadly, no.

No. It was ice cream. More to the point, it was Target not letting me buy ice cream. 

As you may have heard, Ben & Jerry's released a brand new flavor based on the SNL "Delicious Dish" sketch. In case you've forgotten, Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon play the milquetoast hosts of an NPR food show. Alec Baldwin is their guest, Pete Schweddy. He makes a popular dessert for the holidays, his chocolate rum balls, which he calls Schweddy Balls.  Five minutes of ball-related humor ensues, and 13 year olds of all ages giggle uncontrollably.


I like SNL. I like ice cream. Game on!


I was delighted to see the flavor in Target last week. There were a dozen in the freezer case! (Hey, broken bones need calcium.)


But, when I went to buy one, it did not ring up. No big deal, right?

But, apparently, it was a big deal. The ice cream was not in the system! It did not exist! 

"But I am holding it. In my hand."

"I'm sorry, but we cannot sell you that ice cream. It's not in the system."

"All your Ben & Jerry's costs $3.99. Just scan a different flavor in."

"I can't do that. This isn't supposed to be here."

"You have a dozen in the freezer case! I didn't sneak into the store room to get them."

"I'm not allowed to sell them to you. The system has designated them as salvage."

"Salvage?"

"We have to throw it out. It's not supposed to be in the store."

"Fine. Give it to me and I'll throw it out for you!"

And on it went for five minutes. After yelling at two different cashiers and their supervisors a manager was finally brought over. After being told repeatedly that there was absolutely, positively, no way they could sell me the ice cream, the manager keyed in $3.99 and sold me the ice cream.

As we left the store with my trophy, my wife told me that security guards had been gathering nearby, since I had become a problem.

Do not fuck with my ice cream.

So after all of that rage and screaming and yelling, was it worth it? I mean, it has to be the best ice cream in recorded history after all of that, right?


Eh.


It's Ben & Jerry's, so it's not going to be bad. But compared to the other comedy inspired flavors, like Jimmy Fallon's Late Night Snack (with chocolate covered potato chips) and Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream (with chocolate covered waffle cone bits), it lacks a certain pizazz. The rum balls are good, but my wife complained that some of the balls were too hard. I told her that I thought she liked hard balls, and then I started giggling again and then she threw the ice cream carton at me.


So, time to get more ice cream! Though probably not at Target.