Ri and I ditched the boys the other night and stopped at UDF for ice cream. They had a buy-one-get-one-free sale so there was no doubt we had to head there. They were out of my favorite peanut butter and chip so I had to go with cookies-n-cream and cherry cordial. Maria, as usual, took forever to decide a flavor.

She finally chose peanut butter fudge cups with chocolate sauce and whipped cream (the ice cream scooper knows my “only a little bit of chocolate syrup” look by now, thank god, because before that she was getting enough sauce to feed her classroom). We both dug into our deliciousness and we both pooped our heads up a few seconds later. Our eyes squinted.

We had brain freezes.

We laughed at one another’s goofy expressions and then Ri asked why we get brain freezes. It’s certainly handy in 2012 to have an iPhone on hand to research such questions. If I would have asked my mom that question in 1978, we would have had to go to the library (remember the card catalogs at the library?!) and research by using actual books. Ahhh! Maria looked at me like I was 100 years old when I told her that.

We found out that a brain freeze happens when the cold strikes the palate of your mouth which strikes your nerves which swells the blood vessels in your head which gives you a headache. What can you do to prevent it?

Eat more slowly.

Forget it, we decided we will deal with the pain.