Wasted Ice Cream

Don't waste your ice cream!

We fall when there is nothing left to hold on to…

Once a girl name Alice fell to the ground and she never got back up again. What caused her fall? Why didn’t she pick herself up or catch herself? Because sometimes we get to a point in our lives when we’re tired of having to always catch ourselves and never have anyone around to care whether we fall or not. Sometimes we need a hand to help us up or to stop us before we hit the ground, a hand that is not our own.

Alice was a normal girl. She had a normal life. It may not have been the greatest life and it may not have been the most exciting life, but it was hers and it was not altogether terrible. Alice was mostly content, but things change and life gets harder as we grow older. A year ago, Alice was relatively happy, but she’s not like that anymore. Things changed.

“I’ll take life as an ice cream cone,” Karen said grinning at Alice. They were walking from the bus stop toward Alice’s street. “I’m going to eat it all before it melts.”

Alice laughed. “Nice philosophy, but what if you get full before you’re finished? Do you just have to keep eating it?”

Karen looked at her in surprise and snorted. “Yeah. Unless you wanna throw it away and that’s just a waste.”

Alice knew what Karen meant and she knew why Karen was looking at her like that. It was because when you got tired of life sometimes throwing your life away seemed the easiest and most painless thing to do. Recently someone Karen and Alice happened to know quite well had throw his away because he was tired of eating ice cream that had spoiled a long time ago.

Karen suddenly came to a complete stop so that Alice nearly bumped into her. “Why do you always do that?”

“What?” Alice asked looking at Karen with wide innocent eyes.

“Just when things begin to feel normal again and everything’s going okay you have to bring it up,” Karen was angry. She glared at Alice as though she were purposely trying to annoy her.

“You mean Kenny? I bring Kenny up?”

“Yeah, Kenny! It was a year ago, Alice. He was our friend, but he was messed up and he’s gone now. We have to move on and get over it, but you always are bringing it back up. It’s like you like thinking about him,” Karen blinked furiously and scrubbed at her face, hiding tears.

“I do like thinking about him, shouldn’t I? He’s our friend no matter whether he’s gone or what he did.”

“He’s dead, Alice. He committed suicide ’cause he was too messed up to hold on anymore.”

Alice looked down at a brown slug on the sidewalk. The edge of her lip twitched and she pushed a stray black curl behind her ear. “You mean he got sick of eating his ice cream and he threw it away.”

Karen blew out her breath furiously. “This isn’t about freaking ice cream! Get over it, okay? He’s dead… he’s gone! He did something terrible and we’re never going to see him ever, ever, ever again so what’s the point of thinking about it!”

Alice turned away as a soft breeze rustled her curls. A tear slipped down her cheek and she licked it off her lips. Its salty taste filled her mouth and she sighed, closing her eyes.

Once upon a time… and the end… Didn’t that make things much simpler? No middle to complicate things, no plot, no conflict; just a beginning and then an end.

“I’m gonna go home. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Karen said. She hesitated a moment and then left her friend standing on the sidewalk lost in her thoughts. Thoughts Karen obviously didn’t want to be a part of. Maybe it was because they made her feel something she didn’t like to feel… Maybe it hurt her too much and that was why she got so angry. She would rather pretend everything was okay and she was sailing on a ship made of chocolate through a sea of whip cream with butterflies and pink clouds of cotton candy floating overhead. Maybe Alice wished sometimes that she could pretend like Karen.

Alice was opening the door to her home. Things scattered around the house, stuff that had been lying in the same position for ages. Her mother had passed out on the couch as usual.

“Daddy’s gone,” Alice whispered as she looked at her mother’s disheveled appearance. Her mouth was open and Alice could smell the alcohol. “Daddy’s gone and he’s not coming back. Now I’ll go to sleep and you drink your life away and I’ll pretend everything’s good and lick my ice cream cone even though it’s beginning to taste like sour milk, but I won’t throw it away because then I might make someone cry.”

Alice dropped her backpack on the ground and picked up the knife from the table, it was smeared with peanut butter. Alice wiped it clean and held it in front of her mother. “See this, Mom? This is how I make sure I’m still alive.”

Alice pressed the tip into her skin on her arm until she had cut herself deep enough to draw blood. She cut a little deeper and smiled wiping the blood away. “Yup, still alive, but, Mom, how much longer before I can’t take it anymore?”

He mother rolled over with a small moan and Alice nodded dropping the knife. “It was nice talking to you then, Mommy. Maybe one day you’ll actually say something useful back, but maybe then I won’t care anymore.”

Alice left her and went to her room. She sunk on her bed. She closed her eyes. And she dreamed.

Alice is weird, Alice is strange, Alice’s daddy left her because her mom’s a drunk and he was sleeping with the florist’s wife. Alice’s best friend committed suicide and now she’s heading down the same path. She’s an emo, she has no friends, no mommy, and no daddy. Poor Alice. Whispers… whispers followed her through the halls of the school. People who used to be her friends contributed to those whispers they added to those scornful or pitying stares that followed her through classes, through the cafeteria, through the halls, through life.

Karen had not talked to Alice since that day on the sidewalk. Alice’s ice cream cone was beginning to taste worse. Last month Teddy her boy friend had broken up with her because he needed a change. Alice was walking still, but soon she would trip and would anyone care enough to catch her before she fell because she certainly wasn’t going to pick herself up. She was on her way to the trash bin anyway. She could not eat another bite of her ice cream cone. What was the point if no one was there to cry anymore over a little wasted ice cream?

“I’m sick of pretending, Mom, and this ice cream cone is making me gag and since there is no one left to cry I think I’ll throw it away now. Since now I know nobody really cares about a little wasted ice cream as long as they don’t have to smell the spoiled milk or wipe the sticky cream from their finger tips.”

Alice dropped her ice cream cone and jumped. She fell to the ground, no one was there to help her up again, and she didn’t get up on her own. A question though: how many people cried? If she had known so many people would cry; would she have done what she did? Why, I ask you, didn’t they show they cared and catch her before she fell? Because they all could see her falling, but all they did was stare until it was too late.

This story shows us that if we are really someone’s friend and we really care about them we should put out a hand for them to hold onto if they start to fall. No matter how much it puts us out, no matter what we have to do if we really care we’ll be there to show them if they throw away their ice cream, their life, then we‘re going to cry and miss them. Maybe then they will see they can hold on a little longer as long as we lend them a hand.