I went to see a movie today (The Sentinel, not bad, though Eva Longoria as a Secret Service agent is pretty redonkulous) and walking back, taking my usual short cut down a residential street, I began to hear faint, toy-like music drifting towards me. Like chimes, almost, or a music box. I looked over my shoulder just as a yellow van pulled alongside me.
A Good Humor ice cream truck. Van, I mean.
The driver nodded to me. And I nodded to him.
The tune tinkling out of its speakers was "Do Your Ears Hang Low," a song I remember learning very early on in elementary school, complete with a whole set of pantomimes.
Keep in mind my chair's top speed is maybe ten miles per hour, tops. Which is, apparently, about the same speed Good Humor ice cream must be transported at.
So we continued down the street, his song spilling out into the afternoon, in hopes of luring children out for a popsicle or ice cream sandwich. But no one came out.
This continued for several blocks, our speeds perfectly matched, both of us finally pretending the other one was not there, our allotment of nods and waves used up, engaged in the worst race ever.
About Me
- Paul
- Paul Guest is the author of four volumes of poetry and a memoir. His debut, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, was awarded the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize. His second collection, Notes for My Body Double, was awarded the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His third collection, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, was published by Ecco Press/HarperCollins in 2008. His fourth collection, Because Everything Is Terrible, was published by Diode Editions. His poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, was published by Ecco in May 2010 and selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Whiting Writers' Award, Guest lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
8 comments:
I love this visual... you and the ice cream van. Both getting to the point where it's uncomfortable to keep acknowledging each other. And it keeps going! It could only be better if he was you neighbour and you kept pace all the way home.
Yes, that would have reached a surreal kind of perfection.
Good to meet you, Mr. Angry.
Mmm, chocolate taco.
I've never lived in a community where the ice cream truck circles. I can't say I've necessarily longed for the sound of those bells, but when visiting my sister in Tulsa, the truck came through and I felt joyous, giddy at the jingling. :)
But ambling along with one right beside me for a lengthy period of time might be a bit uncomfortable. My, how the circus music could turn provoking. ha
That, my darling, would make a poem.
I was lately informed my cell phone ring sounds like the ice cream truck.
I drove an ice cream truck for a day once -- one of the more humiliating experiences of my life. I was required to play this canned tinker box music and kids kept coming with rock cassettes (okay, I'm aging myself here) and teasing "my" music selection. Now I love kids, but it got old after the tenth or eleventh time.
"the worst race ever"-- love that--
cornshake, you took the words right out of my mouth.
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