That escalated quickly.

Six months ago, after years of searching, I purchased an ice cream cone drinking cup similar to one I owned as a child. The one I found was very, very similar to the one I had owned, but it wasn’t 100% identical. I spent close to ten years looking for one of those cups, so “very, very similar” was good enough for me at the time.

One week after I purchased that cup, my mom found a second green one for a quarter at a garage sale exactly like the ones we had growing up. With a white one and a green one, I was content. I was thrilled. I was done buying ice cream cone cups forever!

Hardy har har.

The one thing that needled me was this picture of the same cup but with a scoop of strawberry ice cream with strawberry (instead of chocolate) on top. That meant there were more variations of the cup out there than what I knew.

Then, someone sent me a link to this eBay auction. Five cones. Strawberry, peach, vanilla, lime sherbet, and chocolate! With chocolate, marshmallow, and orange on top! Now it all makes sense!

(Nothing about this makes sense. I’m a grown-ass man buying ice cream cone cups.)

You can see what the auction went for. Between this and the other cups, I could have bought a lot of ice cream. But what would I eat it out of? Some crappy ol’ plain bowl? I don’t think so!

The greatest thing about that auction was that it finally put a brand name to the cups: GENI. That information’s not particularly helpful in tracking them down unfortunately, as it’s not printed anywhere on the cups themselves. The cones were advertised as being made from “space age plastic.”

The last thing I needed for my cups were some festive straws. We joke about what we would tell ourselves if we could go back in time. There’s no way the younger me would believe that in the future you can just sit down at a computer and type “send me 100 festive straws” and have them magically show up 48 hours later. But that’s what happened.

So now I have six Geni Ice Cream Cone cups made from space age plastic, one Walt Disney-branded cup that’s really close but not exactly the right thing, seven festively-striped straws, and 93 more straws shoved into a kitchen cabinet.

Life is good, man. Life is good.

Thanks to all my Twitter pals who tipped me off to these auctions, and mom for finding the green one at a garage sale. I couldn’t have done it without you guys!