Sounds of the Day

There are sounds that I hear every day at my house. The birds chirping with excitement when the sun comes up, Mister meowing that it's breakfast time, the band practising across the street (they are getting quite good!). And underneath it all, the constant hum of vehicles.

There is one vehicle in particular whose sound I hear every day, and it is the neighborhood ice-cream truck. Ice-cream trucks usually have a melody that is amplified just enough to entice the children to it, a modern day pied piper of sorts. But our melody is Fur Elise, one of the saddest, most haunting tunes on record. I don't get it. This is a tune that evokes images of lost love, friends whose ghost lingers, the tragedies of human existence. And someone decided that it would go well with ice-cream. Wouldn't The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies be better? Or the Sesame Street theme song? Perhaps the strategy is to gently sway the children into such a state of woe, that ice-cream is truly the only medicine, like in Harry Potter with the chocolate. I must say that vanilla with chocolate sprinkles sounds pretty good right about now.... excuse me, I must run after that truck.....