Think Outside the Cone

The following conversation actually happened (although in Spanish, of course):

Meg left school around 10am today so we could get an early start up to Catacamas, the next major town along the "highway." We were heading up to hang out with Meg's peace corp friends and go to the caves of Talgua the following day. We made pretty good time going up there, and after hanging out in Jarryd's apartment for a bit, we headed to the part to get a snack.

There's a little snack bar that serves soda, ice cream, and baleadas, and Meg was excited to order a nevada - basically an ice cream soda. Meg wanted mango ice cream with a Fresca for the soda. Little did she know what a problem that would be.

"Is that mango?" Meg asked, pointing to a tub of orange colored ice-cream.

"Yes," replied the employee.

"Great. Can I please have an ice cream soda with Mango ice cream and Fresca?"

"No, we don't have that."

"Oh, ok, you're out of Fresca? Can I have mango with Sprite, then!?"

"No, it's that for ice cream sodas, the choices are Vanilla and Coke, Orange and Sprite, Lemon and Sprite, or Strawberry and Banana soda," the woman behind the counter said. She was pointing to the pictures on the overhead graphic menu where there were four types of ice-cream sodas, displayed exactly as she had described them.

Meg paused for a moment, confused, then asked, "So you don't have Fresca?"

"We have Fresca."

"So is there a special way that you make the ice-cream soda?"

"We put the ice cream in the cup and give you the bottle of soda to pour over the ice cream."

"And you have Fresca, and you have mango ice cream?"

"Yes."

"So can I please have an ice cream soda with mango and Fresca?"

"But ice cream sodas only come in Vanilla with Coke, Orange with Sprite, Lemon with Sprite, or Strawberry with Banana soda."

Pause

"Ok...can I please have a cup with mango ice cream in it and a Fresca on the side?"

"You don´t want a cone for the ice-cream?"

"No thank you, a cup is fine. How much will that cost?"

"Let's see. Well ice cream in a cup is an unusual order, but you're sort of ordering a similar thing to an ice cream soda, so I'll just charge you the same amount as an ice-cream soda."

Meg paid the woman, thanked her, and walked over to the table to pour the Fresca over her mango ice cream and enjoy her hard-earned victory.

I opted to settle for Orange ice cream and Sprite.