Ice Cream and Smiles All Around

Posted on 01 Feb 2024 @ 2:56am by Lieutenant JG Rafe Caradec

670 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Episode 19 - Tomorrow's Galileo
Location: USS Galileo-A - Deck 3, Rafe Caradec's Senior Quarters
Timeline: MD01, 1552 Hours

[ON]

"Computer, record personal log.", Rafe said. The computer responded it was ready and recording.

"This is being recorded for posterity's sake...and to let you know, Danielle, that if you get this, that I thought I was doing right and I wish you could have known that this day that I experienced, while is it one of my favorite memories, pales in comparison to the day I met you and every day since that I've been with you.

The location was a little five and dime in Pipe Creek, Texas. My dad and I had been working on finishing a shed we had been building. It had been mostly him, of course, since I was only 7. The year was 2370 and I had recently had my birthday. I thought I was big-time. We had only to install the door and he asked if I thought I could hold the door up while he inserted the hinge pins and how since I was 7, it was time for me to do some manly work. I told him I could do it and wrapped my fingers under the door and lifted with all my might. It seemed to not move but he told me to keep at it and it would move.

I kept huffing and grunting and it started to move. Little did I know the door weighed about 80 lbs and it wasn't me moving it. The lip of his boot was under the lip of the plywood face of the door and he rocked his foot back and the door lifted. He said to hold it in place and I heard the first hinge pin go in, then the second. I finally let go with a big "Whew!" He grinned and looked at me and knelt down. 'You did it, son. You DID IT!!' He told me that if I just kept at any task, I could do it. Some would be harder than others but just to keep at them. Even though I was only 7, that stayed with me, his words, that lesson, it stayed with me.

He finished off the door with the third hinge pin and the lock and suggested we go get some very important nutrients and the local ice cream parlor. I leaped for joy and ran to the truck.

We drove into the small town and pulled up to the ice cream shop. Mom and dad didn't have a lot of money at that time, but he had saved a little extra by doing some extra work. He told me to get whatever I wanted so I got the waffle cone with two scoops of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough with caramel drizzle on top. I bragged to the shop owner how I had helped my dad build the shed and the owner smiled knowingly, winking at me, telling me what a fine young man I was to help my dad. There was no better day than that in my childhood.

Then I met you, so many years later. And the day I met you, the moment I met you, it reminded me of that day, right off the top of my head. And it reminded me of when I sat in the booth in that ice cream shop, just a licking that double-scoop ice cream cone, that there were smiles all around, except mine had some caramel smeared on it. Everything was right with the world.

That's how you make me feel, Danielle. If certain things come to light that I did, know this. I did everything with you in mind, us in mind. I hope you understand that I felt I had to keep that information so that those without morals or consciences would not get away with the horrors they allowed to happen.

I love you, I always have and always will."

[OFF]

Lt. JG Rafe Caradec
Senior Conn Officer
USS Galileo-A

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