Ice Cream Truck

It was a beautiful afternoon in late May. But she was trapped indoors, studying for
a test the next day. Dutifully, she solved each problem on her paper, not pausing to
glance at the beauty surrounding her. One by one, she completed each problem like days
being crossed out on a calendar.
Then she heard something that made her frantic pencil stop. A melody. It seeped
into every crack in the walls and underneath the doors. A sweet melody. She glanced
about her. The rest of her family was outside, enjoying the weather; nobody had turned
any music on. Finally, she recognized it as something from her distant youth-the song of
an ice cream truck. Her face lit up and she almost got up to find money. But then, her
eyes swept her paper and she remembered. She lowered her head and her pencil began its
frenzied movements again. The melody went on, increasing in volume.
For some time, she ignored it. Blocked it out of her mind. But then it began to nag
at her, pulling the invisible strings that controlled her mind. She was pulled out of her
chair at the table, dragged to the window as if in chains. She gazed out into the street,
where her mother was buying ice cream for her little brother. He jumped impatiently,
angry that he wasn’t tall enough to see all the ice cream. Somewhere in her mind, she
remembered herself doing those same things, once upon a time. But the memories were
lost in the haze of her mind, and in their place floated equations and definitions, and
schedules for testing.
She stared. She stared even more intently than she had at her paper. But she still felt trapped. She had no chance to run outside barefoot, laughing and pleading her mother for ice cream at the same time. For suddenly, the strings got to work once more, tugging her back to the table. She obeyed.
Sitting down, she got back to her problems and once more blocked out the
tinkling melody of the truck. Another immeasurable length of time passed. The melody
finally began to cease. It diminished and diminished in volume. Finally, it disappeared
altogether, just as her memories had, and there remained only the soft scratching of her
pencil.