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ice cream
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christopher@30seconds.org
We all know the rest, eh? But thing is why? See I've had this thing with youth lately, can't seem to shake it. I'm not worried about getting old. I'm not very old, not considering I'm fully expected to live past 100 years. Hell I'm only roughly one quarter of the way there...it's just that lately, little things have triggered my memory. So I wasn't really surprised when the ice cream truck song began playing itself over and over again in my head.
I remember the ice cream truck. The great unifier. Deliverer of all that was good on hot summer days. The music started far off at first, a few blocks away. Getting closer, closer...I would run in the direction of that music with skinned knees and tree bark under my finger nails. I would use half my allowance on whatever I fancied. I...fancied. Mickey Mouse bars. Push Up's. Rocket Pops. I traded back and forth without care, always knowing there would be another day. The ice cream truck would return, wandering through the streets of my sub-division like a ladybug on a snakes back.
After the truck pulled away and the music faded I was left standing with other kids I may or may not have known and we all sort of dissipated like steam from a kettle. Usually I went down to the creek to look for crayfish, licking whatever I'd bought down to the stick or plastic handle. Push Up's made the best boats and I often got them if I knew I was going to the creek so I could follow the blue, red, and orange polka-dotted cylinders through the currents of the stream.
I don't ever really remember screaming.
I do remember the disappointment when I moved and the ice cream truck didn't follow me. That was nineteen years ago. I also remember sitting on my porch one day, I guess it must have been 1994, and hearing some music a few blocks away. Coming closer, closer. I put out my cigarette and dropped the book I was reading over one knee. I turned my head and longed for that sense of direction I had when I was a kid. I didn't get the truck that day. I walked up the street and saw it stop. Could've made it, but I couldn't face it. I watched the kids jumping up around it and saw the Jamaican handing over Nutty Buddies, Push Up's, and yes...Rocket Pops. But I couldn't bring myself to close the distance...
I remembered the song "Pop Goes the Weasel". I saw the faded ads on the side of the truck and remembered the heat of those days so long ago. In a sense, I remembered my youth once more. After a couple times that summer I finally did walk up to the ice cream truck, and standing there, towering over neighborhood kids I purchased the flavor of youth that I so fancied...
goodnight 2.16.98
