"Third Time Ice-Cream"

There's an expression in Hebrew for when two people meet unexpectedly twice: פעם שלישית גלידה. It implies that the next time they bump into each other, they'll go get ice cream. No one's quite sure where it came from (Wikipedia guesses it's a mangled German or English expression), but it's pretty common. I heard the expression for the first time soon after we moved to Towna, from a woman I saw twice on my way to/from BSM's daycare.

I was totally confused when this stranger started randomly mentioned ice cream. My confusion confused the woman in turn, but not as much as my laughter when she kindly explained the expression to me. C'mon, it's silly! When I ran into her again a few days later, I tried to claim the ice cream date, but she informed me in no uncertain terms that the three meetings must be on a single day in order to cash in. Humph.

Well. Someone forgot to inform the Yerushalayim and Tel Aviv municipalities of that little caveat: both cities ran ice cream promotions to encourage retail activity during our third round of elections yesterday. Very cute.