I can't believe that just happened

Kevin and Mark sat on the curb outside of Bigelow’s Ice Cream Parlour on a hot Saturday morning and went to work on the triple scoop cones they had just purchased, each with their own technique. Mark used the top-down method, biting and sucking globs of the sprinkle covered dairy treat into his mouth as fast as he could until he felt the brain freeze. Kevin used the more deliberate method of a few tongue strokes on top followed by some thorough licking around the perimeter, where the ice cream meets the cone, in order to control the melted runoff and drippage.

It was a busy Saturday in Middleton – the library across the street was being painted, a delivery truck was unloading produce for Lawson’s Grocery and scores of people walked up and down the sidewalk.

As Kevin raised his cone for another lick, a yell caused him to look up. One of the painters slipped on the scaffold, twenty feet in the air. He managed to grab a safety line but kicked a can of paint off the platform. The paint hit the ground and splattered people below. The truck driver stepped in it and slipped, throwing an armload of watermelons high in the air. One of the melons rolled into the street and caused a cyclist to crash into a hotdog cart. Wieners flew everywhere and that caused a Great Dane to drag his diminutive owner through the street by his leash and this forced a motorist to veer into a fire hydrant creating a great geyser. A woman screamed.

Kevin watched the events unfold with interest but then accidentally dropped his cone on the ground. He stared at the splattered blob of pink bubble gum ice cream in disbelief and muttered, “I can’t believe that just happened.”