Carol’s Column

The ice-cream cone syndrome of life

SOME people are born lucky.

Then there are others. Like me.

When I was a gap-toothed five-year-old with braids, knock-knees and right-angled ears, my mother told me I was an ice-cream cone syndrome child.

She explained it like this: "Five children will buy five ice-cream cones and one will have a hole at the bottom and all the ice-cream will fall out. That's you. You have a classic ice-cream cone syndrome."

Which maybe explains why other people's lives seem to run more smoothly than mine.

As a child I was always the one who slipped and fell while roller-skating.

The one who needed stitches on her chin when she fell out of a tree on to barbed wire.

Who caught chickenpox on the day of the matric dance.

Whose strapless bras always fell down.

Who missed the sun rising from the top of Cape Town's Signal Hill on New Year's day in 1960 because she fell asleep five minutes too early.

"Don't worry, you'll grow out of it when you're big," said my mother sympathetically.

"But Ma, 28 IS big," I say in desperation as yet another disaster befell me.

And it's no consolation to know that the ice-cream cone syndrome manifests more serious symptoms the older you get.

Take marriage.

Carmel married a millionaire who whipped her away for holidays in the Caribbean.

Gertrude's husband has his own jet and thinks nothing of flying down to Plet for a weekend.

And Ethel's husband finds winters a little chilly in South Africa and insists that the family spend the cold part of the year in their little 20-roomed beach cottage at Cannes.

"Count your blessings," said my mother as she helped me pack Horace, our ex-army tent, for yet another exciting camping holiday in the middle of nowhere.

"At least you have a husband."

I shut my mind to the thought of Dulcie, divorced and razzling in Bangkok with a simply divine young man she'd met at the Swinging Singles Club.

I tried not to think of the mink coat another divorcee friend, Francisca, had recently acquired from an admirer.

It was the ice-cream cone syndrome that made me swallow my right contact lens when it slipped into my cup of tea one morning at breakfast.

"Don't get hysterical," said my husband calmly. "Phone the municipal sewerage works and ask them to look out for it."

So I did.

Have you ever tried phoning the municipal sewerage works and asking them to look for a right-eye contact lens (soft)?

The bellows of laughter of the officials at the other end almost caused a fracture of my eardrum.

The other evening I sat in the lounge looking somewhat dejected.

"You mustn't let life get you down," said my spouse as he reclined grandly in his armchair, his slippers flapping in the breeze of Liquorice-the-labrador's wagging tail.

"Wouldn't you be depressed if you had the only lopsided gas stove in South Africa? Do you know how difficult it is to cook three meals a day and keep the pots from sliding off?

"I'm tired of living in a house where the plumbing blocks, where the electricity fails, where the roof leaks, where the sliding doors don't, where the patio collapses and dies of old age.

"I'm tired of buying boxes of broken eggs, rotten apples, vrot bananas and bottles of sour milk.

"I want a life where everything works. Where swollen wooden doors don't jam, where cars start immediately and where toilets flush not trickle when you pull a chain.

"I want children who are fresh and clean and tidy, who eat everything on their plates, who never answer back, who are perfect.

"I want a husband who sends me red roses, who sweeps me off my feet and spoils me rotten.

"In other words, I want to try a little caviare. I'm sick and tired of ice-cream cones with holes in them."

There was a stunned silence.

My husband was aghast.

"But surely," he said, "a cone with a hole is better than no cone at all?"

You just can't win.

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