Dear Ice Cream Man

I am fairly certain you are the last of your kind, and I intend to hunt you as such.  You may have thought you were clever, moving just fast enough so that the children with their tiny, inferior legs couldn't catch you.  You made sure the loudspeakers broadcast the dulcet tones of "Turkey in the Straw" loud enough to freeze the languid movement of all the fat people sitting on their porches, fanning the summer heat away with a ham hock.  Perhaps you gain your strength from that look of utter failure on people's faces when they realize that there is not enough time to go inside and get money, then flag you down, thereby calling into question the choices that led to them being overheated and ice cream deprived.

I can only imagine you've been holed up in some dank warehouse, subsisting off of rocketpops and Ninja Turtle headcicles with gumball eyes since 1993.  I can only speculate what led you to venture back into the land of us sun dwellers.  You would think that seeing your truck with it's bright pictures of Froggy Pops and Chocodiles, I would be filled with the lightness and laughter of children. 

Nope.

I was filled with the murderous bloodlust and animal single mindedness of children.  I was minding my own business, driving to work in this sultry wasteland of humidity and pain, and you pulled off a side road and drove slowly in front of me.  The only logical choice I had was to steal your clothes and truck and to become the Ice Cream Man, as Kevin Costner foretold.  It seemed so easy in that moment, to abandon the life I had slowly built and no longer wanted, and to live a carefree life of a frozen treat dispenser and change collector.

I lost sight of you as you pulled into the rich development, ready to sell your top shelf Choco Tacos and Haagen Daas to the spoiled urchins.  Should we meet again, be prepared to fight to the death, for there can only be one.