I am a Vanilla Man. I like my stories like I like my milkshakes: Bland and sugary, almost cloyingly sweet, that lingers on the tongue. I’m not a connoisseur; I espouse simple ingredients of decent quality, preferably handmade, but not always by me. 

My mother taught my brother and I how to make vanilla syrup by bringing water, sugar and extract to a boil. We always kept it in a mason jar in the cupboard by the stove. Stewart’s vanilla ice-cream, and Stewart’s milk. The prototypes were made in a blender, but we had a Hamilton Beach machine after not too long. The process was so easy even I could make a shake and clean up without having to bother anyone. 

I don’t need whip cream or cherries or a fancy glass. Too runny and it sprays all over during the preparation. Too thick and it is impossible to drink. If it requires a spoon, it’s a sundae, dammit. Besides, a shake that thick and cold would risk a brain-freeze headache if sucked up too fast. The perfect thickness was the Friendly’s Fribble, the platonic ideal I attempted but always landed short of. Ultimately it took more ice-cream than I could afford, and a stronger motor to mix properly. 

I could make a shake after a soccer game, to refill myself with lost energy and descend from the heightened and bruising world of competition. Making enough to share with others took no extra work. 

One nice thing about a good store-made milkshake, and I don’t mean whatever it is that McDonad’s peddles, is the extra amount in the stainless steel cup. You could tell how much bonus shake you got by the height of the condensation line forming on the outside. It gave me choice-paralysis, between starting with the glass or the cup-full. 

Either way, what began with such bounty ended with the sound of the straw bottom-slurping an announcement that this one was over, whether you were ready or not.