The change of pace today from our usual hot coffees to these delicious icy treats is welcome. I’m sure with one month of summer under our hats that we must have lots to share, but our time appears limited by melting drinks so I’ll share my biggest update.

My six week memoir writing course is complete, and I have been trying hard to dedicate time to my memoir project on a weekly basis. It is both exciting, and scary. Having made several aborted attempts at writing my memoirs before I finally feel like I’m in a position to start, and finish them.

As for the course itself, I enjoyed it. It served to get me out of the house (something I find challenging), and it gave me direction, and tips for writing. We did some fun writing exercises. Actually, in light of our iced coffees today I would like to share one of these exercises. So, the question I was presented, and that I present to you is this, if you woke up as an animal/drink/ice cream flavour, what would it be? I called my piece, “Frostbite.”

I woke today feeling cold, so bitterly cold. I am colder than I can ever remember feeling. It is a feeling of cold equivalent to tiny pellets of ice floating through my body clinking and clanking as they generate micro shivers. I’m refreshed though, like I have been kissed by a winter breeze. Surprisingly, the icy conditions leave me feeling happy, and certain that I have a teeth chattering purpose.

I sit here quietly. However, as I sit I become aware of a slight heat dancing around me. Before I can become too concerned about the flame like warmth I am shaken, literally shaken, as I am moved from point A to point B. This slight shift in my location affords me a glimpse at my reflection.

Wait.

Stop the show.

Did you see my reflection?

I am blue! I have tiny icicles floating in my body. My body is a slushy liquid contained in a frost coated plastic cup. The very sight of me is reminiscent of a winter chill in the sense that you are required to brace against the cold when you get to close too me.

I feel crisp, wet and cold, and yet slightly numb. Not only do I have an intense desire to give an ice-kiss, but when I move it creates a sound of slushy crackling. In addition, certain ways the light hits me creates a sparkling as the glare glitters off of the solid snowballs stuck inside me. The air around me smells of glacial blueberries trapped in a frigid tomb.

It is crystal clear that something is wrong here. When I went to bed yesterday I was 5’3 with winter green eyes and brown hair dusted with white. There has to be some mistake because now I am barely taller than a snowball at about a foot high, and I am cold blue. I am blue, and I am not even a smurf! No, I can’t be a smurf. NO, I get to be a blue arctic slushy drink in a stupid frosty plastic cup that glistens because it is starting to melt under the fluorescent lights.

To top it off some fool just stuffed a white and red striped plastic straw into my head.

Wait!

Does a plastic lid count as a head?

No, no, no. This can’t be right. I have memories, foggy human memories. I remember blue raspberry artic crush, iced Capps, iced vanilla lattes, iced caramel macchiato, iced teas, Starbucks refreshers, shakes, smoothies, blizzards, and frozen carbonated drinks. Furthermore, I remember cold fingers, cold snaps flooding the mouth, brain freeze, and a dream of summer. These memories are a flurry of hazy suggestions that are doing little to thaw the hypothermic drift building inside me.

Things are starting to look bleak. No sooner does this thought crystalize in my mind than I feel a strange tingling, not a tingle that suggests defrosting, but more like a pulling. It starts down low, and a chill travels straight up the center of me in the same place that the straw is sitting…THE STRAW. Another human memory blasts me, Eddie Valiant, Roger Rabbit and Judge Doom arguing:

• “Eddie Valiant: Drink the drink.
• Roger Rabbit: But I don’t want the drink.
• Judge Doom: He doesn’t want the drink.”

Then it hits me. Just like Judge Doom at the end of Roger Rabbit when he screams in his ice shattering high pitched voice, “Oh no. Ahhh. I’m melting. I’m melting.” Not only am I melting, but I am being drank with an unrelenting eagerness to capture my below zero temperature.

Okay, your turn and judging by the length of the line you will have about 10-15 minutes to write your response while I go and re-fill our drinks. The question again was, if you woke up as an animal/drink/ice cream flavour, what would it be? Sorry, what’s that? You would like a hot coffee this time? Ha-ha, okay. I’ll be right back…

By Shari Marshall – 2016