Ever since the King of America declared that eating ice cream is a fundamental human right, my frozen treat business has more headaches than a woodpecker without his helmet.

You’d think that because everyone has to buy ice cream insurance or go to prison, that I’d be rolling in the cash. HA! I have to pay my supplier two euros for every chocolate Magnum, but the Royal Bureau of Frozen Confectionary Reimbursement only sends me one and a half euros. Don’t even get me started on the paperwork. I’ve got forty-five separate billing codes for ice cream sandwiches alone!

The worst part is the schedule. I haven’t had a single night of rest since Royal DairyCare was passed. The alarms are constantly going off at night and I have to drive halfway across town because some pensioner needs his chocolate fudgesicle RIGHT NOW. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was a real emergency, but many of these characters are “frequent flyers.” The fudgesicle gentleman pulled me out of bed three times in one week!

I wanted my children to drive an ice cream truck when they grew up, but not anymore. The saddest part of the ice cream edict is that I don’t know how long the treasury can keep it up. Trucks full of Germans keep streaming across the border because of the free ice cream! Some idiot published an article in Der Spiegel about the fact that ice cream salesmen can’t refuse any request for ice cream, or we go to jail. Absolutely true. Another hundred Bavarians were found hiding in a shipping container yesterday. I had to go down to the docks and hurl scoops of Rocky Road into the air to calm them down.

My brother lost his job at Shake Shoppe last week. With the new regulations, they can’t make enough money to stay open. They would have gone out of business anyway, because just about all the certified soda jerks in the state are moving to Canada. The ice cream may not be as good up there, but you won’t go bankrupt paying for dairy malpractice insurance.

Want to know the ten scariest words in the English language?

“I’m from the government, and here’s your free ice cream.”

[Reprinted without permission from “An Ice Cream Paramedic,” Harper Collins, 2016]