Tuesday, September 6, 2011

the game is rigged


The ice cream vendors are total hustlers at my son's school. One is set up by the front door with his fridge sized push cart, the other guy's truck is parked askew at the back entrance so there is no way you can sneak out with your kids past the ice cream. I do not think the vendors are friends but, nonetheless, they are co-conspirators. They pray for screaming kids like some people pray for rain.

Drive your moms crazy! their sly smiles seem to egg on to the ninos and ninas as they laugh while kids throw fits and scream for, mommy knows the cure, ice cream!!!

I heard that many of the street vendors were working to pay off immigration debts and they had to buy an inventory every morning and hopefully make a profit from the day's sales. I always wondered how those guys made money with the pushcarts full of icicles and assorted creamery sundries walking block after lonely block with kids rarely playing out front of East Oakland residences. Now I know, $3 poorer every time it's a school day, where Old Faithful is. The schools are paydirt for the ice cream man.

Dude had a fistful of crisp twenties and he was a happy man as the kids clamored around him not knowing how to take turns in a circle closing in.

Later on at home, the Pavlovian bells ring on the vendors' little pushcarts throughout East Oakland's flatlands rousing kids off of their seats and away from Sponge Bob and Spiderman on the t.v. screen, ice cream! Ice Cream, ICE CREAM!!!

One out of ten kids who hears his cue bangs on the door loud enough and convinces his mother to take him out front for a treat. The kid spies Sponge Bob, Spiderman or a Ninja Turtle on the ice cream man's cart or truck side, SPONGE BOB ICE CREAM!!!!!!!! Mom will pay for this ice cream one way or another.

The game is rigged.

1 comment:

u.v.ray. said...

I read a quote the other day. I can't remember who quoted the quote... or who made the quote originally. But it was....

I taught my kid about taxes by eating 38% of his ice cream.

I don't know about the States but here in Britain, when you total the amount you actually pay in taxes it would be about 70%.

Regardless... this is an opportunity to teach children.