Some types of kids will eat the icing off the birthday cake and leave the moist, denuded slab of cake lying dead on the plate. They'll pull the crispy bits off the fried chicken and leave the meaty carcass behind. I was the other kind of kid, the one who ate her treats slowly, methodically, from the worst to the best. I could spend half an hour on a Twix bar, nibbling off the greasy, slightly grainy chocolate from the top and sides before separating the cookie from the thick, soft strip of caramel, which I'd roll into a ball and eat last. Give me Lucky Charms and I'd eat every last bit of soggy, Styrofoam puff cereal until I had an entire bowl full of marshmallows. I'd marvel gleefully at my bounty before digging in with a soup spoon, the marshmallows slippery as minnows in my mouth.
This culinary deconstructionism and best-for-last attitude explains my affection for the Drumstick. First comes the nuts, to be picked off one by one with your front teeth. Then the shattery chocolate shell, to be broken and removed piece-by-piece. Next, the globe of sweet, bland vanilla ice cream, to be licked to nothingness in a precise spiral pattern. The chocolate-lined cone would be eaten in a spiral pattern too, with overlapping rows of tiny, neat bites.
And there, hidden at the very bottom, was a solid cone of chocolate. I'd still be savoring the melting lump in my mouth even after I'd washed the stickiness off my hands and settled in to watch the Smurfs.
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