You scream, I scream, we all scream for …

Beer!

Well, I do when the grandkids aren’t around. But when they are, we all scream for ice cream. My screaming happens when I eat it too fast and get brain freeze, which I would get even if I were marooned on the blistering sands of the Sahara Desert without food, water or a heaping cone of vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles.

This year’s ice cream season officially began on a sunny Saturday. After Old Man Winter was finally run out of town and took his sleet, mittens and sinus infections with him, I drove two of my granddaughters to a shop called Magic Fountain for frosty treats that go straight to the sweet tooth if you are a kid and straight to the waistline if you are an adult.

“What do you girls want?” I asked as we stood in a long line outside.

They looked over the extensive menu printed on a large board, where an excited bunch of other kids had congregated while their parents (and one grandparent) held their place in line, but it didn’t matter because they had already made up their minds.

“I want a cup of cake mix with rainbow sprinkles,” said one granddaughter, who’s 12.

When she was 4, she and I went to Magic Fountain (“Where Ice Cream Dreams Come True!”) to make a batch of honey-cinnamon with the owner.

My granddaughter helped pour a bottle of honey into a plastic container. She also helped pour eight ounces of ground cinnamon into a measuring cup and dump the ingredients into the container. Then she squeezed in a bag of ice cream mix and helped turn on the machine.

When the ice cream was done 20 minutes later, my granddaughter tasted it and exclaimed, “Wow!”

“Now,” said the very kind and patient owner, “you can say you taught your grandfather how to make ice cream.”

“I remember that,” said my granddaughter, who didn’t want to make ice cream this time. “I just want to eat it.”

Her sister, then a baby and now 8, wanted a large mint chocolate chip milkshake with whipped cream.

“That cup is too big for you,” I said, pointing out that the plastic container’s contents could choke a water buffalo.

“No, it’s not,” the girl protested. “I can finish it.”

I placed both orders with a young woman behind the counter.

“What would you like?” she asked me.

“A vanilla soft serve cone,” I replied.

“What kind of cone?” she inquired.

“Anything but a traffic cone,” I said with a goofy grin.

She sighed, because it was really busy, and inquired further: “Wafer or waffle?”

I waffled before choosing wafer.

“Rainbow sprinkles?” she said.

“No, thanks,” I responded. “I’m driving.”

I paid at the register — $26.09 on a card, plus a nice tip in cold cash because the frazzled employee really deserved it — and grabbed a fistful of those wimpy little napkins that are sadly inadequate for wiping melted ice cream from the faces, and sometimes clothing, of sloppy patrons.

By that I mean grandfathers.

The girls and I sat outside on a bench and, in the strong spring sun, began slurping, sipping and slobbering our sweet treats.

Immediately my soft serve started to trickle over the top of my cone, so I had to lick the edges while inhaling the top of the creamy mound before it collapsed in an avalanche of goo.

“I can’t finish mine,” announced the younger girl, who had promised she could.

“I can’t finish mine, either,” said her sister.

I did finish mine, used every napkin in my possession to clean up the mess on all three of us and walked back to the car with the girls.

“Let’s come back tomorrow!” the older one said.

“Yeah!” her sister agreed. “But Poppie,” she said to me, “you have to stop telling silly jokes or you’ll never get any rainbow sprinkles.”

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