PUPPIES AND ICE CREAM CONES--CURSE-FREE ZONE

Paddington Bear smiles. The Sun casts its benevolent rays across the landscape, sending all shadows scurrying home to their bad places. My Little Pony trots, unbridled, in her corral and Strawberry Shortcake beams beatifically at Scrappy Doo as she serves him a bone. He licks his jowls and smiles.

The ice cream man is coming. The ice cream man is coming. The ice cream man is coming!

And all the cute children and toddlers wobble from their mommy and daddy's homez and totter to the sidewalk.

In the distance, just beyond the breast of hill, the darling children hear the delicate chiming of the bells, arranged to sound like "Camptown Races." As the music swells, little Ricky turns to his towheaded neighbor, Tommy, and says, "My Mommy told me that's the Doplee Affeck." Tommy, all of two years old and just learning to walk, looks at him blankly. "Ya know? When the music gets loud when it gets close?" Tommy looks at him blankly, and sways on his feet in a baby-wind, and then jabs a finger in his nose. Ricky sighs.

Melinda is the first of the sweet children to see the pale blue truck as it appears over the hill. "The ice kweem man!" she shrieks. It is like a domino effect rippling through the glut of children. "Ice kweem!" "Yay!" "Popsicks!" "We want ice kweem! We want ice kweem!" The children's parents look out their front windows at their pride-and-joys and smile lovingly at each other. In the Kludowski home, arms around each other's shoulder, little Ricky's father takes the opportunity of warm parental pride to sneak a lingering grope of his wife's breast. She smiles reassuringly at him and pats his posterior. They sigh in unison and look, through the gauze of the curtain, back out the window.

***

The pale blue ice cream truck pulls smoothly to the corner and the driver turns off the engine. "Camptown Races" is amputated and the only sounds are those of the blessed children sniffling and jostling for position and the soulful sighing of the wind through the nearby grove of willows. With an unoiled squeak, the driver of the truck, Matthew Yoosip, opens the sliding glass window and proclaims gleefully, "Huzzah! Open for business, kids!"

The crowd of adorable toddlers cheer collectively and surge forward.

Yoosip laughs genially. "Now, now, children. One at a time, don'tcha know. One at a time."

Little Ricky is the first in line and he selects a strawberry shortcake ice cream delight. When he attempts to pay with the crinkled dollar that he had secreted away in his tight front pocket, the ice cream man laughs softly and shakes his head. "Your money is no good, here, young Master Ricky," he says. "This one is on the house." Ricky beams and tears open the treat and digs in, his sharp little incisors flashing.

That scenario plays out with the rest of the darling children--no money, no, no money, not today--until they have all been served.

Little Ricky Kludowski is the only one of the children to possess both the wits and the courage to ask the benevolent ice cream man why the ice cream had been free today.

Yoosip props his elbows on the counter and lays a finger against the side of his nose. He appears to be deep in thought, staring wistfully out the sliding service window to the white-capped mountains in the distance. He looks slowly back down at Ricky. "Young Master Ricky, sometimes adults have to do certain things to make themselves super to children. Do you understand that?"

Ricky nods. "Yeah. My Mommy says super is an adjockteeve."

Yoosip laughs softly. "Yes, yes. An 'adjockteeve,' Ricky. Sometimes, adults just want to be super. Kids?" he asks the group, who seem to be swaying more pronouncedly now. The sun slinks behind a dark cloud. "Kids, I have puppies in the back of the truck! Do you want to see some puppies?!" As one, the children let loose a volley of whoops and laughter and they stagger/stumble to the back of the truck, where Yoosip had cracked the double doors. The interior of the truck seems to be as dark as a grave.

"The puppies are in here, kids," he says, opening the doors wider. "Come on in. They're here," he points. "Towards the back."

One after another the children climb the short ramp into the back of the ice cream truck, the smaller children being helped along by the more-developed idiots. Eventually, they are all in--everybody is in--and Yoosip hops gracelessly out of the back of the truck and slams the doors shut. "Eleven units," he mutters to himself, and his unconscious snarl reveals two offset sharp and pointed teeth. "Not too bad, but Master is going to be angry with me again." He scoots along the driver's side of the pale blue truck and hops in and fires up the engine. "Camptown Races" blares to life.

As the first of the parents burst out of their homes, Yoosip throws the transmission into "Drive" and screeches off, his ice cream truck showing now the power that it had been hiding. From the back of the truck, wails of children go unanswered. The souped-up 350 engine has the creaky truck cruising at 50 miles per hour within a minute and by the time the first of the parents reaches the curb, the ice cream truck is disappearing around the corner, its tires leaving stinking black rubber on the glossy new pavement.

The first parent on the scene, Hiram Kludowski, Ricky's father, looks helplessly down the street and yowls back to the house for his wife to call 911. He looks around, shell-shocked, at his neighbors. They too have a look of disbelief tattooed on their countenances.

As they wait for the impotent boys in blue to arrive, the ability to communicate begins to slowly filter back and they bemoan their gullibilty and their trustingness.

A butterfly flits over the group and rises in the sky, rendering the huddled masses miniature dolls below.

--PUPPIES, ICE CREAM CONES, BUTTERFLIES. AND SMILES--