“Ice cream store, comin’ froow!”
I roll my eyes and continue to type. The ice cream store has trundled into the living room six times in the past hour. Believe me, I like plastic ice cream as much as the next guy, but my critical paper is due in a week, and I barely even have any sources. I hear a stomp on the floor, and look up to see my five-year-old cousin Mason leaning on his tiny food cart, chock full of ice cream cones velcroed to felt sprinkles, looking at me expectantly.
“HELLO-O! THE ICE CREAM STORE IS HERE!” he screeches.
I’m about to tell him that I have a tummy ache, and I can’t order any ice cream right now, but I stop. As I stare at his wild hair and dirty socks with a matching shade of black, I ask myself; how long will it be until he forgets all about the ice cream store?
Perhaps in a month, when he sees his kindergarten classmates selling ice cream during free play. He smiles as he looks over at the refined menu (scribbled pictures on construction paper drawn with Sketch scented markers) showing a near-infinite number of delicious flavors (eleven). He begins to walk up and ask to play when his best friend Jake, a similarly wild-haired boy who he’d met on the bus last week, pulls him back by his shirt collar.
“What are you doing?? Get OFF!” Mason whines.
“What are YOU doing?” Jake counters.
“I wanna play shop!”
Jake looks at him like he’s lost his mind.
“That’s a baby game! None of the big kids play shop! Come on, let’s go play with the Legos. My brother plays with Legos all the time, and he’s in fourth grade.”
Mason looks back at the shop, but decides Jake is probably right. After all, who could doubt someone who has a brother in fourth grade?
It could be in a couple of years, when he enters his second grade classroom for the first time. Mason notices a trend that he does not like. Every year since he’s been in school, his classrooms have always changed at the beginning of a new year, and not in a good way. Of course he knows that they aren’t the same classrooms, but each one seems to be duller than the last. When he was in preschool, the walls were absolutely saturated with bins of toys, colorful art supplies, and picture books. But looking around now, there is a startling amount of thick books, white papers, and mysterious filing cabinets. When he does see objects that resemble toys, Mason is disappointed to see that they are counting blocks and Math 24 packs. He feels like he’s been tricked. Nobody around him seems to care that things are changing, so why does he? Mason then gets a terrible feeling in his stomach. He wonders if the other kids even play with the toys he wants so badly anymore. He tries to remember the inside of Jake’s house or his megacool friend Ellie’s, but he realizes that they both have baby siblings. Oh no. He imagines Jake and Ellie reading chapter books with no pictures together, laughing at him as he plays pretend with his baby toys with their baby siblings. Mason resolves to go right up to his mom after school and tell her to put the toys up in the attic with his baby stuff, ice cream store and all.
Maybe it will be in seventh grade, when he’s standing in the lunchline. Mason stands with Ellie and her friend Victoria, and they wildly chat about the rumor that a teacher cursed somebody out last period in front of the entire class, though they can’t agree on which student was berated or what it was about. Mason had gym class this morning, and played soccer against Jake and Ellie so intensely that he is physically exhausted, and absolutely starving. As they file through the lunchline, Ellie reaches for an ice cream, and Mason is about to follow when Victoria pipes up.
“Ellie… are you really going to eat that?”
Ellie’s hand freezes over the cone as she looks back at Victoria
“Yeah, um, I guess. Why?
“Oh, it’s really nothing,” Victoria says, “my mom just told me that you should only have ice cream once a year. She said anything more than that is for people that don’t care about their bodies.”
Victoria mimes having an enormous stomach. Ellie looks back at the ice cream, and slowly retracts her hand.
“Oh, yeah, totally.”
The two walk forward together as Mason comes up behind them, feeling a bit nauseous. He stares at the ice cream, his stomach . He sees Ellie stop and turn back towards him.
“Dude, are you coming?”
Mason takes another look at the ice cream and walks ahead. Maybe some other time.
Possibly in eleventh grade, as he walks through the annual carnival. Mason still feels awkward about how big his feet have gotten, and trips over a tree root every once in a while as he wades through the sea of people. It’s embarrassing, but it does feel nice making Ellie laugh. He’s been noticing that she’s been laughing at a lot of what he’s been saying recently, even though she used to mercilessly insult him for his notoriously terrible jokes. He knows what this might mean, but he doesn’t dare to think about it, he can’t hope it to be true.
“Ooh, I see an ice cream stand over there!” Ellie yells over the shouting of carnies, the shrieks of children on questionably safe rides, and the chatter of people in long, snaking lines.
“Um, do you mean the one all the way over there? The one that we have to physically battle our way to?” Mason shouts back, smiling but also genuinely concerned.
“Don’t be a pussy!” Ellie yells.
And so the two begin their journey against the crowd, Mason acting as an immovable force as Ellie ducks and weaves her way behind him. Eventually, as the two are almost split up, Ellie snatches his hand. Mason tries to hide his blush. The crowd thins as they approach the ice cream stand, and Mason silently screams as the most special girl he’s ever known interlocks their fingers. He is about to ask what flavor she’s thinking about, but she suddenly pulls him behind the stand, where all is dark, and everything else in the world suddenly becomes very unimportant.
I look back over at the ice cream shop, only to see that Mason is gone. I put down my computer and pray that he didn’t leap out a window by accident. I walk into the dining room and see Mason with his iPad, completely immersed in an episode of Bluey while slowly shoving white cheddar Cheez-Its into his mouth.
“Hey dude, what happened to the ice cream store?” I ask
“Huh?” he mumbles, a glob of Cheez-It goo falling out of his mouth, “what ice cream store?”
At this, I snort and begin to laugh until Mason is looking at me like I have just lost my mind.
“Never mind, bud.”
“Um, ok. Do you wanna watch with me?” he offers, putting the iPad down on the table.
“Yeah. I do.”