Charlie skipped home with an extra spring in his step. Today was Wednesday, after all, and every Wednesday, his mother would take him to the supermarket and buy him an ice cream cone, scooped from one of the sixteen tubs of ice cream behind the glass. Fifteen of these tubs contained consistent flavors of ice cream week by week, day by day. One tub, though, cycled through an unknown number of flavors every week, something he had not picked up on until eight weeks ago. He was only seven years old, he reasoned, so even though he and his mother had been honoring this ritual for the entirety of his school career, his observational faculties had only recently provided for detecting such patterns.

Charlie wondered what flavor would be in the sixteenth tub this Wednesday, and whether or not it would be intriguing enough to sway him from his desired rocky road cone. He wondered what flavor could convince him to

As usual, Charlie rounded the corner the separated the living room from the kitchen, where he expected to find his mother either sipping some afternoon coffee and typing on her laptop computer. Instead, he found his mother seated next to a slight whisp of a bald man, dressed in a dull gray suit, both surrounded by sheets of paper, stacks of paper, strips of paper.

"Hi, Charlie," his mother smiled, looking up from the papers in her hands. "This is Geoff, our accountant."

"Hey, Charlie," the accountant said without looking up. He was pressing buttons on a calculator that noisily spat out receipt tape.

"Hi, Mom," Charlie said, touching his hand to the wall. "Are you ready to go to the supermarket?" he asked. "It's Wednesday."

"Oh, honey," his mother sighed. "I'm sorry, but today's Tax Day. We've got to finish these tonight and I can't take the time away to get to the supermarket."

"But it's Wednesday," Charlie

"I think Tax Day supercedes Wednesday," the accountant looked up and chuckled to himself.

"I know, sweetheart," she said from across the kitchen. "We'll go tomorrow, okay?'

Charlie was an agreeable child. "Okay," he nodded. He let his backpack slide down his shoulder, turned around, and walked back into the living room.

That Wednesday was the day on which Charlie learned that traditions are merely fragile constructs of human design, that life's pleasures can easily be derailed by life's obligations, and that all things are impermanent.

Labels: short stories, taxes, Wednesday