The Visa Diaries

I cannot believe that I have had this blog for over a year and have not yet written about the wonders of Tasti-D-Lite. I love Tasti-D-Lite. Anybody who knows me knows that I love Tasti-D-Lite. That I will detour blocks out of my way to pick it up, and can be sometimes be found with a cone of Tasti-D even in the depths of winter.

For those who don’t know me, or indeed Tasti-D-lite, it is a “unique low-calorie frozen dessert.” Fake ice cream. I’m sure it tastes vile compared to real ice cream, but frankly I’ve been a female in this society (and thus on a low-grade diet) for so long that I cannot remember what real ice cream tastes like. So I think tasti-D is just divine. So, though I cannot do an ode, let me count the ways I do love thee, Tasti-D.

I love the crass, synthetic, pink and blue colors

I love the name, pun, mis-spelling and all. If only it had a heart instead of a dot over the “i”

I love the teen-age girls who work there (except for once when I went into the one in New Haven, and there was a cute Aussie guy working there, who I am sure would never eat the stuff in a thousand years. I overheard him tell the Yale undergrad girls in front of me that he was just there to make some money. I cannot even imagine how much play he must have gotten.)

I love the fake flavors. Who can tell Rocky Road apart from Mudpie? Yet they have hundreds of them, slightly different chemical compositions

I love the fluffy, airy, calorie free-ness

I love the hoards of weight and age conscious New York women who flock to them, and say things like “let me try the flavors” (Tasti insider language for the two rotating flavors of the day, in addition to the permanent staples of chocolate and vanilla), and “I’ll take nine pints of peanut butter to go, please.”

I could develop a big treatise about how Tasti-D-Lite is a completely contingent product – made necessary by the same society that makes it possible. But I won’t, because a respite from thinking and analyzing and calculating is exactly what Tasti-D-Lite is for me, and why I love it most. When I go in there, I get to be an airhead for as long as the cone lasts. I don’t have to worry about why I want it, what it means, what it is going to do to me, what the consequences are. My head is as vapid and vaguely sweet as the airy, puffy, slightly flavored stuff in my cone, and it is delightful.