by jkleena » Fri Feb 13, 2004 11:38 pm
BTW I am anemic, but I too thought the ice chewing was just a coincidence., but the pattern I'm seeing here is phenomenal.
As I child I didn't have the patience to let hard candy dissolve in my mouth. Jolly ranchers, lollipops etc, I would end up crunching away at.
It wasn't until I was in my late teens that I started having a fixation with hard mint candies. Whether its those red & white starlite mints, altoids and even upgraded to blue peppermint Halls cough drops!
Even when I wasn't sick, i would buy the Peppermint Halls. I would tell my family that I had some slight congestion. I was actually addicted to the menthol vapors that would fill my mouth and sinuses. (Sometimes while sucking on a cough drop, I would hold a jar of Vicks vapor rub to my nose and smell it, for a double dose of menthol eucalyptus power)
Then one day, during a college seminar in a small auditorium of students, I had just popped a cough drop in my mouth, and accidentally swallowed it whole. After a period of discomfort, I knew I had to stop. This was insane.
At the time, I also worked part time at Braums Ice Cream & Dairy Store . I would sometimes stay inside the walk-in freezer, loving the "freezy" smell of the ventillation, the ice, the ice cream and other produce (limes, onions, pickles)
Best of all, this Braums Ice Cream Store on Forest Ln & Plano Rd in Dallas,TX had the best mini cubelet ice, which broke easily. I would order a cup overflowing with ice and a little bit of soda water to dissolve it.
I discovered that crunching on ice was better than crunching on hard candies or cough drops. I still had that cool menthol effect, yet if i accidentally swallowed a piece whole, at least it would just melt
To this day, my family and friends know my fixation with "Braum's Ice" I live in San Antonio,TX now, where there is no Braums (but there is Sonic Burgers which has great ice in small pellets) but whenever we go back to Dallas for visits, they're used to my cravings for Braum's ice, and I would buy a bag to take back to S.A.