Comes the summer, as we all remember from the carefree and raucous days of our youth, comes the ice cream man.
Far off in the distance snakes the tinny notes of a tinny, repetitive song and we gather at street corners, salivating madly and all atwitter with anticipation. We gesticulate at the sun, from whose dancing waves of heat the ice cream truck emerges, golden in the late afternoon light (yes, late afternoon - when children's bellies are too full for Mystery Meat and yet starving for sweetly delicious artery clogging delights). We gesticulate and wave, we wave and we yell - and we chase after the ice cream man, who turns our street corner and keeps right on going.
I've bore witness to this often in my relatively short life, in numerous towns and cities (some, admittedly, on the television but, that does not take from the reality of what I see across the street), and I've come to the modest conclusion that all ice cream men are sadistic bastards who rather enjoy the gaggle of small children running behind their small, gaudily painted truck - the gaggle of small children with faces red and slick and glossy from exertion, waving dollar bills in their tiny sweaty hands, small coins jingling psychotically in small pockets.
Or perhaps this is (has always been, though certainly now more than ever) a cleverly run government campaign against childhood obesity. Maybe there aren't any treats at all in the back of the ice cream truck, but broccoli sprouts in popcorn boxes or insects on sticks.
Or perhaps the ice cream truck is merely a ruse, which would explain why the truck goes deeper and deeper into the darkness of the side streets... Windowless vans and cheery trucks have always made me nervous, however; I do have an obscenely overactive imagination.
Far off in the distance snakes the tinny notes of a tinny, repetitive song and we gather at street corners, salivating madly and all atwitter with anticipation. We gesticulate at the sun, from whose dancing waves of heat the ice cream truck emerges, golden in the late afternoon light (yes, late afternoon - when children's bellies are too full for Mystery Meat and yet starving for sweetly delicious artery clogging delights). We gesticulate and wave, we wave and we yell - and we chase after the ice cream man, who turns our street corner and keeps right on going.
I've bore witness to this often in my relatively short life, in numerous towns and cities (some, admittedly, on the television but, that does not take from the reality of what I see across the street), and I've come to the modest conclusion that all ice cream men are sadistic bastards who rather enjoy the gaggle of small children running behind their small, gaudily painted truck - the gaggle of small children with faces red and slick and glossy from exertion, waving dollar bills in their tiny sweaty hands, small coins jingling psychotically in small pockets.
Or perhaps this is (has always been, though certainly now more than ever) a cleverly run government campaign against childhood obesity. Maybe there aren't any treats at all in the back of the ice cream truck, but broccoli sprouts in popcorn boxes or insects on sticks.
Or perhaps the ice cream truck is merely a ruse, which would explain why the truck goes deeper and deeper into the darkness of the side streets... Windowless vans and cheery trucks have always made me nervous, however; I do have an obscenely overactive imagination.
No comments:
Post a Comment