A sad tale with ice-cream

When our doorbell rings we normally won't bother to see who's there unless we have a prior heads up that we should be expecting guests or a delivery. But there was no way to pretend no one was home because our living room lights were on and the TV volume was up.

It was a young fellow at the door with a heart-wrenching story about how he had to help his mother support his family of three brothers, blah, blah, and would we be so kind as to purchase some ice-cream from a small styrofoam box he was carting around?

It was the same type of ice-cream our local vendor-uncles sell in the form of wafers and sandwiches from off their motorbike sidecars. He had a variety of flavours too and so happened he was able to supply us with sweetcorn and his last carton of raspberry ripple. How much? $20 for the two cartons we had taken off his hands. Blink, blink... a tad steep, but who were we to cast a wet blanket over youthful entrepreneurism, right?

That was last night. Tonight while we were over at M-i-L's, a girl approached the gate with a story about how she had to work to pay her school fees, blah, blah, and would we be so kind as to purchase some ice-cream from a small styrofoam box she was carting around...?

Next time we want ice-cream at a premium, we'll walk to the supermarket for Ben and Jerry's. And we'll savour it while wearing headphones over our ears and watching TV in the dark. Call first if you want to visit.