"Sure," my grandfather answered with a straight face from the couch.
"Oh shush," she reprimanded.
I added that I wanted ice cream too. My grandmother turned and disappeared into the kitchen. I looked to my grandfather and we chuckled quietly to ourselves. His belly bounced up and down as he held off louder laughs.
Outside, the sun humidified the afternoon. Across the street seemed submersed in a cloud of summer haze. The mountain further back had been gone since late morning, hiding somewhere behind the humidity. Inside though, the giant, wall mounted air conditioner in the dining room chugged away noisily and kept the house at a cool sixty degrees.
The ice cream came in its usual form: a wafer cone in one of three colors (plain, a dull red or a light green color); and a hard, nearly frozen solid mix of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream stacked with as many scoops as easy balancing would allow. Perfect for a hot summer day.
My grandfather and I sat licking and biting into our ice cream in front of the TV. The Yankees were winning again. My grandmother sat behind us at the dining room table playing 'beat the devil' as she always did.
Little did I know then how precious that moment was. From about that age, ten-years-old, I consistently heard the older people in my family tell me how I should appreciate the moments I have and be happy that I'm young, "You're living in the best years of your life," and, "Enjoy life while you're young, Jonny," were just a few. But when your young you don't have time to be happy about it, the excitement of your youth distracts from the slow, rational and calculated thoughts of an adult. Kids don't have the receiver to pick up that frequency. They don't even have radios. And when they finally figure it out, finally graduate to an age that permits them into the 'club of growing up,' they realize it's too late, and there's nothing else they can do except prepare to warn the next generation about the speed trap their own life already passed through.
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