Popsicles

One dull summer afternoon in my youth, I lay half asleep on the couch while waiting for a man to pass by my house. It was almost ninety degrees Fahrenheit outside, and my few friends had all gone on vacations with their families. With nothing to do but wait, the heat and boredom began to seep into my brain.

My grandmother walked by as I napped, chiding me for not making good use of my time. Even if my friends were not around, the garden needed watering, the kitchen counters needed scrubbing, and my grades (if last year was anything to go by) needed work. Here I was, up to no good, idling about the house when I could be doing something worthwhile.

“Idle hands are the devil’s playthings,” she said.

“I don’t want to miss him”.

“Miss who?”

“I can’t say yet – I don’t want her to hear”.

Her was my niece – my older brother’s daughter. Mom had Todd fifteen years before me, as a result of youthful antics. Todd, in turn, had his daughter at the age of twenty-eight. I was just shy of my sixteenth birthday, and my three-year-old niece was sitting in the next room, playing with her toys while the television ran some sort of show about the alphabet.

“You’ve got her doing nothing too,” my grandmother scoffed. “If you do nothing else today, couldn’t you at least play with her?”

“I will,” I promised.

“Well?” Grandma tapped her foot expectantly, waiting for me to get up and go amuse my niece. Todd was working, as were my parents, although my mother would be back home any minute.

“I’m not ready yet,” I muttered, peering out the window and waiting.

“Waiting on a boy, girls your age,” my Grandma sighed, defeatedly walking away. I listened for the sound of music coming down the street, but heard nothing. Dejected, I fell back against the couch and wondered what was taking so long.

I would rather have been watching paint dry, but the man was important, even if he had no idea. Moreover, I couldn’t spoil the surprise for my niece, who needed to have no idea what was coming for full effect.

My shorts had pockets that were unexpectedly deep, and in those pockets, I kept what I had saved away handy. There was still no music and no man outside. My eyes started to get heavy again, and my thoughts faded into how much I wished I was anywhere but here.

Seriously – leave me in front of drying paint.

Thoughts of cerulean oil drying on plaster had me drifting off into an ocean of dreams. I floated away on a small, makeshift raft, and the summer heat rolled the waves around, making my rest less easy. In my heart of hearts, I knew that land was not far away, but I was lost on how to find my way back home.

A siren song emerged from some unforeseen corner of the ocean. Enraptured, I tilted the raft with all my might in that direction. As the waves rolled me ever closer to the music, I suddenly jumped with a start and found myself back on the couch.

Ten minutes had passed, according to the clock on the wall. I could still hear the music, coming from outside.

Music.

Oh great – I missed him!

Bolting off the couch, I screamed as loudly as I could at the top of my lungs: “ANNA!” My niece dropped whatever she was playing with in the other room. As she toddled out of the room to come check on me, I was furiously digging through my pockets. I found what I needed and promptly bolted out the front door, with my niece yelling behind me.

As I chased down the music man, I could see my mother’s car pulling into the driveway from the corner of my eye. The thunk of her car door closing behind her barely registered as I saw my awaited target slowing down on the road.

The ice cream truck came to a complete stop after seeing me. From the distance, I could hear my niece calling to my mother, asking what was going on. A bewildered ice cream man stuck his head out of the right-side window so that I could see him.

“Aren’t you a little old to be chasing down the ice cream truck?”

I produced what I had been saving for him from my shorts pocket – an envelope with some of my birthday money in it.

“Is this enough for two bars?”

“Sure,” the ice cream man said, mildly amused. “Whaddya want?”

“I’ll have the blue raspberry popsicle,” I smiled, looking at the selections plastered to the side of his van.

“And the little one…. Uh….”

I had to stop there and think about it. She’d never done this before – a range of goofy popsicle bars shaped like cartoon characters seemed like the best bet. I spied a particular lemon-flavored bar that was modeled after some TV show character she liked. The eyes were colored with food coloring instead of made with candy, meaning no little pieces for the toddler to struggle with.

It was perfect. As he rapped his fingers on the edge of his truck impatiently, I picked the second bar.

After I paid the man, I turned and saw little Anna toddling up to where I’d flagged down the truck – my mother followed behind her, surprised and amused by what I’d been planning. As Anna finally reached me, the ice cream vendor returned to the window, having pulled both bars out of the freezer at the back of his truck.

I lifted Anna up so that she could take her own bar from the man, and the man’s face changed from annoyance to soft amusement. Anna’s face lit up at the sight of her first ice-cream truck purchase, and her head bobbed a bit in beat with the slightly off-key ice cream truck music.

“Well, well,” my mother grinned. “What a nice first experience”. She walked over and helped Anna open the packaging on her bar. We walked back to the house while I slowly stained my mouth with blue raspberry.

My grandmother smiled at me approvingly. I watered the petunias outside for her once I'd finished my popsicle.