Hi all,
Today's post is about secret codes, children, and ice cream. If you're a parent you probably already know why.
Anyway, those who know me know that I love ice cream. I may even count as a connoisseur. I've organized two ice cream tasting tours: Sam's Somerville Scoop Shop Scramble and the Crazy Cambridge Creamery Crawl (I'm a fan of alliteration). I can tell you about the different shops, their best flavors, the textures, store hours, etc... I've heard that New England eats more ice cream per capita than any other portion of the country. I'm not not going to claim that I'm personally responsible, but I'm certainly doing my part.
Given the frequency of consumption, it became necessary for my wife and I to develop coded language to be able to discuss the topic of ice cream in front of the kids. For a while, we'd use the term "helado," but the kids are enrolled in a bilingual Spanish program, so that code is now out.
The replacement code was to use the NATO phonetic alphabet. Instead of saying "ice cream," I'd say "India Charlie Echo Charlie Romeo Echo Alpha Mike." This lasted for a little while longer, but was eventually broken when my kids A) learned how to spell, and B) put two and two together.
The search for a new, new code is on, but despite that, it's still fun to say "India Charlie Echo Charlie Romeo Echo Alpha Mike," so I still use the expression frequently.
In fact, the expression has been living rent free in my head since last week's post about tattoos. It came up as a candidate tattoo design, but like I said, I'm not a tattoo person. But, I definitely would wear the heck out of it as a t-shirt. After eating my brain for a while, I tried playing with some designs and came up with this:
If there's interest, I may put together a short run of t-shirts. let me know!
Best regards,
Sam Feller
aka THE Awkward Engineer