“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Did y’all eat a lot of popsicles when you were a kid?”

“Why?”

“Just fucking because. Seriously, did y’all have popsicles in the freezer?”

“Yes.”

“Everyone did, right?”

“To some extent, sure. Why?”

“Ok. So, would your mom get a box of popsicles, or even those liquid ones that were in clear plastic?”

“Yes. We were the clear plastic kind of family.”

“So, as the kids ate their way through the popsicles, would there always be the ones no one wanted that would just stay in the freezer all summer?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what flavors those were?”

“Lime. And, lemon maybe. They were the lime green and yellow ones.”

“Exactly. The fucking yellow ones. And, they weren’t lemon, they were banana.”

“Ok. I’ll take your word on this. You sound pretty adamant.”

“I am because my house always had the green and yellows backlogging the freezer. My mom would buy more and we’d eat them all except for the green and yellows. So, now there are two packs worth of leftovers. This would go on all summer and they would just pile up. For whatever reason we never threw them away and the reserve would just build and build. Eventually, they would start to seep out of the plastic and make a mess in the freezer.”

“And you just refused to eat the lime or banana ones?”

“On rare occasions I’d eat a lime one. The bananas were vile poison and were never consumed.”

“And you’re still carrying these feelings around with you?”

“I didn’t know I was until last weekend. We took my son to a birthday party. The mother hosting the party is one of the class moms at my son’s school, but apparently she’s not much help. It’s become a joke how she volunteers for everything but then never follows through. The other moms always have to pick up her slack, but then she pretends as though nothing happened.”

“Sounds like a peach. So, don’t actually know this lady?”

“Only know of her. But, from what others have told us, she’s a complete flake. Like, she’s the mom who brings her kid over for a playdate and then will pick him up 30 minutes late without calling. Her son is always late for school. She forgets to pack things for him. Shit like that.”

“So she has the scarlet letter as a bad mom?”

“Pretty much. But until now, I couldn’t have given a shit. We don’t know her. It didn’t affect us until this weekend. We took our son over there for this birthday party and the desert treat was banana popsicles.”

“The horror, the horror.”

“Exactly.”

“So this offended you?”

“Yes. Because it confirmed everything I’d heard about her. I didn’t need any other piece of evidence on this woman besides the fact she bought banana flavored popsicles for her son’s birthday. That told everything I needed to know. It told me she doesn’t know him. She doesn’t pay attention. She probably didn’t even look at what she was buying.”

“Wow. Well, playing devil’s advocate, maybe the son’s favorite flavor is banana?”

“No child’s favorite popsicle has ever been banana in the history of this great land.”

“Well then. What did you do?”

“I watched my son shun his gross yellow popsicle and then I kept a good eye on him. We left 20 minutes later. No telling what else might happen.”

“Catastrophe averted.”

“Amen.”