icicle

Have you heard that the best murder weapon would be an icicle? Yeah, apparently that's supposed to be excellent for stabbing someone and then melting away evidence of murder. I'm not saying I want to be a murderer, but I just wanted to test that out and see if an icicle would really be a perfect murder weapon.


"Dad, do we have any icicles?" I ask my dad. He's watching TV because his old college football team is playing, but I don't think he's really ever paying attention because his team never wins. Why would you want to watch a losing team? Then again, he never seems very happy when he's watching TV, so maybe he is paying attention and feeling depressed at the same time.


"Why would we have icicles? We live in California," he says.


"I want to kill something with it and watch it melt," I say.


Like I said, I don't think he's really paying attention to the TV, but I don't think he's really paying any attention to me either. He keeps his eyes on the TV and just tells me I'm a crazy kid.


I find my mother in the yard outside gardening. "Hey Mom," I say to her when I get close enough, "do we have any icicles? I'm doing an experiment on murder."


"Well honey, I don't know," she says. She's shoveling at the ground and wipes her face with her sleeve. "What's this experiment?"


"I need to see if I can kill something with an icicle and I have to watch it melt."


"The icicle or the dead thing?"


I sigh loudly. "The icicle, Mom. The dead thing can't melt."


"It can if it's made of ice," she says, shoveling harder at the soil.


That shocks me because then not only would the murder weapon disappear, but the murder itself would be gone too. All that would be left would just be water, and what's the point of that then?


"You're really smart, Mom," I say admiringly.


"Go away. You're bothering me."


So I think hard about the coldest place nearby, and I go back in the house and check the freezer. We didn't have any icicles in there, but there are small bits of ice that I can sharpen. I grab the biggest ice piece and begin to whittle it with a butter knife.


When I have a sharp enough piece, I go outside and find some ants. I think about how murder is not good, but then I remember that ants are annoying and ruin a perfectly good cookie on the ground. So I pretend I'm a scientist and how I'm doing this in the name of science, and then I begin to try and stab an ant, but it's too fast for me.


My conclusion is that icicles good for nothing except cooling drinks.