Who Stole My Belly Button?

What's this?


It's a Dairy Queen Dilly Bar, of course! (As seen through the not-so-professional lens of my iPhone)

Maybe I'm the only one that remembers going to DQ to get a bag of Dilly Bars with Dad. Most often I remember going there to get a Family Home Evening treat. Sometimes it would be after a softball game. Other times for no real reason at all. Every time it was the best thing in the world.

I grew up with an inordinate amount of love for my local Dairy Queen (the one on 43rd & Dunlap, for you Phoenix folk). It was a spot I remember going when Dad wanted to reward us for absolutely no reason at all. And I can't remember a better feeling as a kid. Dairy Queen was a special place. In my (possibly distorted) memory it represented the pinnacle of the "just because" love that parents show from time to time.

What's funny is that after all these years I still feel the same about Dairy Queen. It continues to be one of my essential "go to" treats when I just want my kids to know how great they are. No reason at all. Just a small message from their dad.

Of course, they can't know what it really means to me. That this is one of the small ways that I can be like my Dad. That there's a connection and tradition in the Dilly Bar that somehow has become desperately important to me to keep alive.

So yesterday I was having a rough day. Painful. Too busy. Rushed.

And Andi had just been to the dentist for a temporary crown. And Lauren was running around getting ready to teach her college class. And I was quickly running out of time to prepare my Church History institute class. I was stressed. Lauren was stressed. Andi was stressed.

And I'm sitting in the Enterprise Car Rental office waiting to get my wonderfully sparse Dodge Avenger (woohoo) when I realize... it's time for the Dilly Bar.

See... that's the thing about the Dilly Bar. There's a "time" for it. I just know when it hits. And it was most definitely time.

Of course, nowadays I get a little let disappointed when I go get a pre-packaged box of Dilly Bars from DQ. It just isn't the same as getting the old bags out of the DQ freezer from when I was a kid.

You know what I'm talking about, right? You'd grab the bag that they made right there in the store. You knew they hand-dipped them in the store with their soft-serve ice cream because *ALL* Dilly Bars had the "belly button."

That was, without doubt, the single best part of the Dilly Bar. Chad and I *loved* the belly button. That was waaay more important than the flavor (butterscotch or chocolate, iirc). You needed the best belly button to have the best Dilly Bar. The "best" Belly Buttons were a magical fusion of symmetry, size, and the subjective quality of the "swirl" on the peak. It was an art form. And it was everything.

If you don't know what I'm talking about then you unquestionably missed out on one of the true joys of childhood. Ahhhhh, the Dilly Bar belly button *rocked*.

For a time I think Chad and I were the world's foremost connoisseurs of the Belly Button. We were the Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell of the Diary Queen Dilly Bar. We took it seriously. Seriously.


Oh, and they came in those little paper "sleeves" like you could never get away with today because of all the potential dangers. But all of those things made the Dilly Bar experience for me as a child. Untoppable. And nothing seemed more meaningful in the moment.

Well, today's Dilly Bars are different. I don't think DQ realized what they were messing with when they changed such a classic.

Now I buy them in a pre-packaged box that obviously comes from a factory somewhere. They're sealed in a plastic wrap like a popsicle. On the good side they have more flavors. Lauren wouldn't care so much for the Dilly Bar experience if they didn't now have one with crushed Heath Bar.

But here's what kills me. NO Belly Button!

What?

How is that even a Dilly Bar?

I try to explain to my kids the cosmic significance of the belly button. It doesn't work. It's just another one of dad's silly stories from when he was a kid (a specialty of mine).

And yet, even as I'm disappointed that Dairy Queen insists on messing with the best part of the Dilly Bar (and my memories of Dad), my kids think the Dilly Bar is the best treat you can get for no reason at all.

Because it means dad loves them. No strings. No conditions. And they must be magnificent because dad brought home Dilly Bars just for the heck of it. Oh, yeah!

Thanks Dad. The Dilly Bar lives! And still works ;-)