Giant ice cream sundae.

For Illustration Friday, the subject was: “sugary.” I’ve always hated to follow directions, and the sound of this word sets my teeth on end, anyway. I’ve never liked powdered sugar on baked goods. But I do like jimmies! Out here they call them sprinkles. I prefer all chocolate.

I found a whole forum on jimmies, here.

Someone at school told me that jimmies is actually a ra-cial slur related to the Jim Crow laws (‘course, she was from Jersey)…anyone else heard this?

I hope not! I never heard that before. More comments ideas, below.

Yeah, I’ve heard that they’re sprinkles if they’re multi-colored, and jimmies if they’re chocolate, because it was slang for Jim Crow. And even if it’s not true, enough people around think it’s true, so I call them all sprinkles. Noooooo guys! You’ve got it allll wrong! The chocolate sprinkles known as, “Jimmies” were started in the Boston area a number of years ago. The reason for calling them Jimmies was because each time a person put these chocolate sprinkles on their ice-cream, the money spent on the sprinkles was donated to the Jimmy Fund. Hence, they started calling the chocolate sprinkles “Jimmies.” I am not sure whether the money is still donated to the Jimmy Fund, but the act of kindness still lives on as the name “Jimmies” still continues.

Full disclosure: I’m from Philadelphia. Jimmies it is. Also: I would have loved to have included this quirky cartoon in my chocolate book, but the title is “What do Women Really Want? Chocolate!” So I had to leave this one out. I’ll include it in my “What Do MEN Really Want?” book. The answer to that question is chocolate, too.

Right?

This is a very odd cartoon, isn’t it? But who doesn’t like a little terror with their ice cream?? It took me several years to realize that men don’t like food cartoons very much, so male editors rarely buy them. They just don’t. And women’s magazines usually have a woman in them, so can’t sell this to them (although the womens mags also buy mostly from men cartoonists, men of a certain age. Most of whom are bachelors. (Yes, the editors are that sexist.)

I don’t know why I did this idea , but giants have to eat, too. And I wanted to see what he’d do when he didn’t get what he wanted.? And I just think a giant sundae sounds wonderful.

I wrote more about jimmies in my chocolate blog.