The Agony and the Ecstasy of Tasti D

It's unseasonably warm here. Well, warm for the Bay Area, at least. It's definitely ice cream weather...or gelato weather. If I were in New York still, I'd say it's Tasti D-Lite weather. If you've never had Tasti D, it's essentially a low-fat, low-cal soft serve. But tastes a helluva lot better than that description suggests. In the hot summer months, it's a solid alternative to gorging oneself on Ben & Jerry's.

See, in my last apartment, I lived two doors down from a candy store that sold Tasti D. Naturally, I was fond of going on Tasti D runs at any and all hours; much to my irritation, the shop closed at a mere 11 p.m. (I often found myself dashing in at 10:50.)

It was in early August 2005 that I had my Tasti D–related disaster. I tootled down the three flights of stairs in my building (yeah, it was a walk-up), walked two doors down, and opened the door—the heavy glass door, edged in metal around the bottom—into my foot. Did I mention I was wearing sandals? Oh, and the metal edging around the bottom of the door? It had been bent up at the corner. My foot thus gashed open, I moved out of the way so the woman behind me who never once ceased yammering on her cell phone could get past. I asked the guys behind the counter for some napkins. They helpfully pointed. I stuffed the napkins into my sandal to keep from bleeding all over the floor, ordered my Tasti D, and schlepped back up the three flights to my apartment.

And Afshin and my roommate, Matt, called me an idiot for getting Tasti D after slicing my food open. But come on—I was already down there and time and Tasti D stop for no one.

In retrospect, maybe I should have sued. I mean, sure, I'm a klutz. But the metal on the door was bent upward and, even worse, the employees were totally unhelpful. I mean, I asked for napkins so I wouldn't bleed all over their floor and they just pointed. That's kinda toolish, don't you think?