Watermelon, Watermelon, Watermelon

Ever have one of those Tom Sawyer kind of days?

Where the weather's nice, not too hot, sunny... the kids are outside playing, you're in the house reading a book. Yeah, me neither.

No wait, that happened to me yesterday. And wherein there lies an adventure. Of sorts. Of the gastronomical variety. But bear with me.

Brainyboy asks me to come outside and shoot some hoops, so I slap my tennies on and go outside. He's demonstrating his complete mastery of the standing-backward-to-the-goal-flipping-the-ball-over-his-head bank shot which doesn't do much more than fly straight up in the air and hit me on the head, when we hear a sound...

A sweet, sweet sound. Musical almost. The sound that to me brings back hot summer days roasting in the St. Thomas sun, fingers idly lapping at the surf... Oh wait, that wasn't me. Anyway I recalled the hot Tennessee summers of my youth as the melodious tones of a wandering Ice Cream Truck reached our ears.

BB looked at me, eyes gleaming, tongue lolling.

I said sure, and to go ask his mom if she wanted one, and to bring me my wallet.

So to make a short story impossibly longer, the ice cream truck finally rolls down the street (anti-grav engines still some years away from ice cream truck installation). We make our purchases. A strawberry Crunch thing for BB, an ice cream sandwich for mom, and Tink and I decide on something called a Watermelon Bomb Pop. I remember eating plenty of those red, white and blue bomb pops when I was a kid (and those were available too) but you can't beat the taste of artificially flavored watermelon gelatin-based frozen ice treat.

So we dug in.

The kids wandered off again, BB inside the house and Tink to talk to the kids next door and gloat at her new treat. Laura and I sat around the front door steps and chatted, downing our treats.

Mmmmmmm.

Mine was quite good - the red part was watermelon flavored (whoda thought?) and the green I believe was lime. Since I'm a greedy ice cream eater, I chomped down almost to the bottom...

And bit into something harder than regular ice.

I reached a finger into my mouth and pulled out a sliver of something....black. My immediate thought was an old filling, but I couldn't imagine ice cream doing something like that and it wasn't hard enough for a filling.

The second thought was...bug. A fly. About the right shape and consistency... Ok, gross. G-R-O-S-S. I glanced down at the pop and saw a small cavity where the strange nasty black mass had lived only moments before I bit it out.

I tossed the stuff to the ground and showed the pop to Laura. She was puzzled but suggested I see if the other side had anything in it. Sure, hey, anything for science.

I bit into the other side, and found another black mass. I spit out the (then) offending green, red and black mass on the ground.

Are you seeing where this is going?

Fearing both our watermelon pops had been contaminated, I called Tink over and asked to see her pop. Thus far, no offending black mass on hers. I asked her if she'd noticed any strange dark objects in her Watermelon Pop.

Notice, strange dark objects. The light had still not yet begun to dawn on me.

"What?" Tink said. "No, daddy, those are seeds."

*blink*

"Oh," I said. And I looked at the wrapper description:

Cool down with the taste of refreshingly sweet watermelon - complete with sweet candy seeds and a lime rind!

Ok, return to your homes, citizens. Nothing to see here.

I finished my yummy Watermelon Bomb Pop, candy black seeds and all.

Now this time it wasn't the magical sound of the ice cream truck I heard, but my dear wife and daughter laughing at me.

But I'll get them back, oh, I will....