Soft Serve

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Inspired by “Tomatoes” by James Crews

When I see a child eating soft serve ice cream, I’m transported into the back of my father’s Chevy Malibu, speeding down the windy roads of suburban Pennsylvania on a humid night, thick with bugs in the headlights and the sound of cicadas competing with “Kodachrome” on the A.M. radio.  I’m humming along, trying to keep pace with the ice cream, which is now melting down my wrist and dripping onto the vinyl upholstered back seat.  I sense that we are quickly approaching the danger point where the bottom of the cone will become too soggy to hold their molten contents, and will burst apart, leaving me covered with sticky, milky goo.  And then there will be my mother huffing and grunting as she tries to wipe me off with an old wad of Kleenex from the bottom of her enormous purse, smelling vaguely of perfume and Dentyne.  And I will sit there in shame, utterly confused about how something so good and quickly turned so bad.  My father would shake his head at the mess and threaten to never buy me soft serve ice cream again, but I knew that he would.