My first torturer was a ROTC-Nazi whose sundae-cup scraped across the glass counter, filling me with nails'n'blackboard shudders. "Man, that's a terrible noise," I laughed shakily. A sinister, piggy gleam lit up ROTC-Nazi's eyes. He scraped the cup again. A mistake, an accident, I thought, as my body convulsed.

I repeated myself hopefully. "A terrible noise." ROTC-Nazi smiled dreamily, close to some savage epiphany. Again, the cup scraped. I snapped. "Yo, cut it out, jerk." The Nazi merely sniggered, and cruised down the line.

Another form of harrassment comes from people who think I can hand out free food. They employ a couple of tactics. The hip, let's-be-brothers approach is a favorite. "Hey dude, whyncha sneak me a coupla more goodies?" they wink, bodies contorted by the old Monty Python nudge-nudge routine. Say no more, say no more.

Next is the gee-I'm-so-cute-and-friendly approach, usually employed by girls and unctuous preppies. "Aw, c'mon, please, pretty please," they whine, eyelids batting somewhere down about the level of their drooling lips. But most annoying is the dissatisfied customer angle, to which there is no legally permissible reply. "Hey kid! I get more than that don't I!?" No you DON'T, no you DON'T.

At first--again before I got sly--I would mumble excuses about getting fired. But now I retreat from the counter, take a moment to listen to the stereo, and return with a wink and a smile. "I gave you more," I lie, and they shuffle happily off.

Roommates and visiting friends are another source of troublesome entertainment from the other side of the counter. If there's more than one friend visiting, a competition immediately starts to see who can make me screw up first. Once, distracted by a shouting friend, I let the blender slice into the cup I was holding. Half-churned vanilla and shredded paper spewed across the service area, covering me and my customer with sticky blobs.

It's toward the end of the night and the joyful confusion which is the scooper's basic element has accelerated. Orders are forgotten, the radio gets louder, we smash into each other more frequently, and the accumulation of goop spreads into face and hair. Revelling in the chaotic, carnival atmosphere I put up my sweatshirt hood to accentuate my insanity. This provokes customer comment. Customers never expect a reply. "He must be getting cold (snigger snigger)." My eyes roll, scoop clatters from my hand. "No I'm not. I'm just fucking weird." Nodding cowed agreement, the line moves on. Chuckling quietly, I return to my smooshing.

Just before closing, the crowd is backed up to the door and I'm surrounded momentarily by scoopers with whom I've never worked before. My roommate Ted enters and, snickering, announces to the store that we are, in fact, secret lovers. There is a pause in the serving rush as scoopers and customers eye me with raised eyebrows. Ahhh, this homophobic world we live in.

Then finally the door is locked, and we speed up a notch to clean up. Legs out in a Chuck Berry Duck Walk, I hop around singing into my mop while the manager rushes about waving correction slips and time cards. Then we're in the service area, cranking out the final tasks. Both choosing the same moment to drag out an ice cream tub, we collide. Eyes bugging, faces centimeters apart, we break into a primal scream duet. Nancy joins us, and we all scream again, faces flushed, drowning out the music, and then finally collapsing into exhausted laughter. Closing time.