I'm on Martha's Vineyard and that means I'm having lots of ice cream. I love ice cream. And I've even done a few stints scooping and pumping ice cream (and frozen yogurt) myself. I once worked at a place in Arizona called The Fountain of Yogurt. We had a whopping 8 fro yo flavors and a whole host of hard ice cream flavors and this stuff called Fruit Frazee, which was like pureed fruit with no sugar added (kinda like soft sorbet).

I used to make myself milkshakes and ice cream sodas and cones and cups of ice cream and fro yo with sprinkles galore. But I never went for the candy toppings like oreos and M&Ms and peanut butter cups. I'm a purist, just sprinkles. And just chocolate ice cream or fro you. Or uber chocolate like dark chocolate or milk chocolate or any other variation of chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.

So it's no surprise that when there is ice cream in my books (like the Fribbles in THE BOOK OF LUKE or the cones in RICH BOYS and LOCAL GIRLS) the main character always prefers chocolate. Perhaps I lack imagination, but I just can't fathom choosing anything else.

I also worked at a place called The Cultured Cow. It didn't have ice cream, just frozen yogurt (but it also had home baked cookies, which meant I could raid the refrigerator and have all the chocolate chip cookie dough I wanted). We served this amazing flavor, Ghiradelli Chocolate. So dark and rich and amazing. I loved it.

Amazingly, I didn't gain a zillion pounds at either job, even though I helped myself to more ice cream and frozen yogurt than is humanly possible. I chalk that up to a fast metabolism that probably wouldn't behave the same way today.

My past ice cream scooping experience makes me a pretty picky customer, like if they don't put enough chocolate syrup in a milkshake or don't push the ice cream down into the cone so you get ice cream long after you've eaten all the stuff on top.
Luckily I get to hone my skills at home, where there is always a carton of chocolate ice cream in the freezer, a tub of sprinkles in the cabinet and always, always enough ice cream on the cone to last until the very last bite.