Life speak 'n' sprinkles

I haven't left Wooster for nearly a month. Four weekends in a row, I've remained confined to Northeastern Ohio. Sure, there have been a few trips north to various malls and eating establishments, but for the most part, my travels have hit a dry spell.

My writing humor has hit a bit of a dry spell, too. It seems as though I've been doing some pretty serious life-speak thinking here lately. Lucky for you, I get to board an airplane this Friday and take a little trip. That means my razor-sharp whit and knee-slapping good humor should be back and in rare form in a jiffy. I think Hampton Inn pillows just have some sort of revitalizing aura about them. Sleeping on them instantly make me smarter, funnier and better looking. Fo sho.

Until then, you have a couple more days of philosophising, life-lesson-learning, meaning-of-the-world-contemplating Laura left before fun Laura gets back.

Therefore, let's talk about something I know we all spend a good deal of time pondering.

Sprinkles.

I love sprinkles. I love sugar-coat sprinkles. I love chocolate jimmy sprinkles. I love rainbow sprinkles and crystal sprinkles and round dessert sprinkles and cake sprinkles. But most of all, I love crunchy sprinkles.

At one time in my life, I thought crunchy sprinkles were the standard. I mean, if crunchy sprinkles were the kind of sprinkles Uncle Fred's pizza/movie rental/coffee shop/catering/computer-fix-it-man-inthebasement Place offered, surely everyone else outside of Pine Bluffs, Wyoming followed suit. Now, I also thought I was going to grow up to be the next Kristi Yamaguchi. My Olympic gold would be followed with a lucrative concert tour with Randy Travis. I had a pretty good grasp on reality at age six.

I was seven when my brother explained that I had to be able to actually skate on ice if I wanted to be a professional figure skater. I ordered crunchy sprinkles outside of my hometown at age nine and was told they didn't exist. I was 22 when Randy let Carrie Underwood sing "I Told You So" and I had to explain to him how detrimental that would be to our relationship. Three childhood dreams; all shattered.

Until this summer, when the Guerne Heights Drive In taught me to believe in miracles. Crunchy sprinkles do exist! They do exist! I don't care what the Cheyenne DairyQueen says, they DO exist outside of Pine Bluffs! Crunchy sprinkles live in Ohio, and they've been 2.7 miles out of my grasp this whole time!

This is what crunchy sprinkles look like:

It's a wonderfully perfect mixture of rainbow jimmies and these crunchy little morsels that taste like a combination of Captain Crunch and Rice Krispies bathed in awesome and coated like Nerds.

When the waitress (and everyone else in a 2.7 mile radius) heard me passionately explaining exactly how incredible the crunchy sprinkles were, she packed extra on the cone and then brought a dish full. My voice apparently carries in small rooms. She all but patted my little blond head and told me I only got the extra sprinkles if I finished my corn dog like a good little girl and didn't fuss any louder about the yummy little sprinkles.

Maybe I should have pretend to be offended by being treated like a full-grown baby child that needed pacified by sprinkles to behave in public, but I was eatin' this up.

Literally. I ate all the sprinkles off my 10% butterfat twist ice cream in about two seconds. Now, I have been known to buy tubs of rainbow jimmies and eat them as a snack by the spoonful, but I had bigger plans for this bowl of sprinkles.

Re-dip! No need to eat plain ice cream here, folks. There's enough crunchy sprinkles to cover every surface. You can just keep re-dipping and re-dipping and re-dipping. It is a fantastic experience.

Even when the ice cream is all but leveled and you don't think you need more sprinkles... you do. At that point, the cone has started to get soggy and you really just need to have more crunchy sprinkles to add texture to the flavor palate. Food critics talk about this all the time.

 Half re-dips are acceptable, too.

So are nub re-dips. At this point, it's like just dropping the last inch of a slobber-covered FunDip Dipping Stix into the sugar powder and then dumping the whole packet back into your mouth.

Stop pretending like you haven't done that.

 If you left any crumb of crunchy sprinkles behind, it's acceptable to scrape the bowl with your finger.

Also: the joy of sprinkles is meant to be shared, folks. Let your friends in on the fun!

And by share, I don't mean give away any of the sprinkles the nice waitress lady set in front of your own face. I mean make sure they get their own special dish that in no way reduces your personal sprinkle intake.

Boooooy howdy... now stick that little feather of wisdom in your hat and go out and kick this week's hiney!