When you lick an ice cream cone, a really really god ice cream cone, you get that inital soft scoop of it on your tongue and you pull it into your mouth. Curled there on top of your tonge, it melts and squishes around your mouth and teeth, you sometimes let it slide down your throat, half-melted. Other times you give it the once over in your mouth, seeking chunks of stuff in it, just in case. Then down it goes and you go for that next lick. Never quite as good as the first one, but always great. You catch the drips down the side and in the end you dispose of the cone last and then it’s all gone. Melted away down your throat and sometimes on your shirt or shorts. The last of the ice cream gone.
In the summer time, all the Ice Cream stands are open for business. They have big signs that implore you to come try their amazing flabors. Some sell Gelato or Sherbert, soft-serve or sundaes. They all want your money for their wares. Bored teenagers and flamboyant foreign men all vie for your dollars as the summer marches on.
In Scotland you can get a 99, which is a cone (usually soft-serve) with two chocolate bars stuck in it (Flakies) that give the eater a chance to choose betwen keeping the ice cream from melting and eating around the chocolate bars, or eating the chocolate first and running the risk having ice cream down your shirt. The choice was yours.
In Ontario (and other places I assume) we had no ice cream trucks, ratehr the Dickie Dee cart, which was a bike-cart deal that a surly teenage boy or a jubilant girl would push around the streets, ringing a series of bells. The reaction was the same as that to the Ice Cream truck, balls and toys would drop, aliens would go unfought, cobra commander’s final blow never landed and children would stream to the street with whatver cash they could get from their parents to buy some seriously overpriced frozen treats.
Then Summer would come to an end, and the Ice Cream stands would close, one by one. The last holdout left with a big tub of pralenes and cream and heavenly hash to sell. Hard. Icy. Bricklike. It was the last of the summer Ice Cream and it was still better than anything else, because it was the last of Summer.
Tomorrow, School.
My Friend ruined "The Big Toy"
Published by NiteMayr on July 10, 2008My friend Bryan Solgoode ruined the Big Toy for us all.
It feels good to say it out loud.
He was my friend and all, but only after the fact. He wasn’t my friend when he did it. It was his fault though, or more correctly, it was his mother’s fault for raising him as a crybaby. Bryan could probably crush your dreams of fatherhood with a stern look these days, but when he was young you could bring him to tears with a strong word. Thus Bryan destroyed the fun of childhood by being a giant slobbering wimp.
In the picture linked to this story, you see an open, vacant lot where a gigantic three tier, rope bridged behemoth of awesome once stood. It had swings, and ladders and sand and tire swings and a tower. Three stories tall! An amazing “Big Toy” by any accounting. I wish I had a picture of it to show you, but the fun police tore it down after Bryan “Big Baby” Solgoode fell off of it and hurt himself (through his own misadventure).
This was one of those Big Toys that would be called an attractive nuisance these days and be shut down so as to avoid lawsuits from crazed parents. I mean, they didn’t even have to pay for medical bills, he didn’t die! Years later, when involved in fights that cost a kid the use of his kidneys, Bryan didn’t have his legs cut off, did he? Nope, but because Bryan fell off of the biggest and best big toy in Kincardine, we all lose out. We keep losing out when something cool or fun is closed to avoid lawsuits.
Where does it all end?
Note: Bryan Solgoode is not his name, I changed it, for FEAR OF BEING SUED.