It was just past bedtime and we were finishing a family game of Blokus. Instead of filing them up the stairs after the game, though, Greg told the children to “Loooad up!” They piled into the van. It could only be something good, and they knew it.

The surprise was a trip to get ice cream, but I tried to convince them that we were hauling old paint cans to the dump at 8:17 in the evening. “Nuh-uhhhh,” they hoped. Now, we’d tried this ice cream thing before with not-so-stellar results. I hoped this night would be different.

First I have to back up. We hit Dairy Queen for the first time as a family a few months ago (no, this isn’t some religious conviction), but it was more annoying than enjoyable. There were just too many choices: sprinkles or no sprinkles; dipped or not; cup, cone, or an over-priced specialty. What ever happened to measly vanilla cones? (You learn to keep things simple when you’re feeding a crowd.) Our kids didn’t know what to do with themselves. Too bad they could read and see all the pictures or else it would’ve been easier.

A twenty dollar bill with not-so-much-change left us with a mess of cold, drippy, sticky stuff. It was all too much, too sweet. It took a long time to figure out our order. Good thing, as we had a lot of time waiting in the drive-thru. Now I remembered why we’ve never done this before.

That evening on the way back home, I can remember the car ride like it was yesterday. The two preschoolers’ ice cream dripped faster than they could lick them. #2 didn’t like the sprinkles on her cone. All the crying from the backseat was getting annoying. The baby joined in the ruckus because nobody shared with him fast enough.

It wasn’t the first time I’ve ever looked over at Greg and asked, “You mean we paid money for all this?!” I say this to him every night when we’re sitting there with the dog, too.

So this recent night, we changed the strategy and did the pajama run to McDonald’s. Here at McDonald’s, you only can get either an ice cream cone or a sundae. Five bucks and change later, we all pulled away happy. It makes me wonder if choices aren’t the epitome of a good culture, but rather people in a culture who are content with either chocolate or vanilla. Nothing dripped, nobody cried, and the order only took 30 seconds to figure. Greg was happy about the bill, and I was happy about the backseat noise.