Ice Cream Falls From the Sky!

I’ve never met a kid that did not posses imagination. You can see it when they’re playing with toys, cow pies, empty boxes and anything else we adults throw into the trash. They really do remind us that one person’s trash is another kid’s never-ending fun and entertainment. I especially enjoy when kids go on with their random and playful behavior as though no one were watching. Well, I watch (in the non-creepy kind of way). Even introverted and antisocial kids hold much creativity and imagination behind those sealed lips. The moment you get them talking you begin to realize that picking their brain can be quite entertaining and inspirational.

The cool thing about imagination is that we can personalize it any way we want. Some color their imagination with scary monsters, while others dream of the prettiest unicorn and bilingual walking humpback whales. Me, well, I dreamed of flavored ice cream falling from the sky.

The idea didn’t just randomly appear in my head. I was misled to believe that by my US-born cousins. They had come down to Mexico for vacation and eventually came over to my house to visit.  As I started to get to know them, the conversation of snow came up. They began telling me about the cold winters in the US and how sometimes it gets cold enough for snow to form and fall from the sky. I was 6 years old and had never been outside of Mexico. With the daily tropical heat I was used to seeing, I thought it was impossible. I was intrigued. You see, the English word “snow” literally translates as “nieve” in Spanish. Well, “nieve” just happened to be one of my favorite words because it is synonymous with ice-cream (the others being “helado,” “raspado,” “sorbete” and “hielito”). Obviously, kids aren’t the best story tellers, but a story from one kid to another is as real as the oxygen we breathe.

To make a long story short, the day I did go to the US, I was very disappointed. Not only did the snow not taste like vanilla or chocolate, it was flavorless. There must have been acidic rain a few hours before it started snowing. I was devastated. Probably one of the harshest realities I’ve had to face in my entire life 🙁   Way to let a kid down mother nature!