Once upon a time (the storyteller said) there was a boy who lived on the outskirts of a small town with his mother and his father. The boy was an inquisitive but pensive lad, forever exploring the byways and niches of his little neighborhood, poking and prying to see what he could see. He loved his little suburb, but even more than that, he loved the town and waited anxiously for the day when he would be permitted to walk its streets on his own. His parents would tempt him often with excursions into that fantastic world, holding his hand as they wandered past stores that seemed to sell Magic and Wonder itself. "Soon," thought the boy, "soon I'll be old enough to come here alone." And sure enough, the day came when the boy was summoned by his parents and told that he could go, unchaperoned, into town for the afternoon. They gave him one shiny dollar to spend on whatever he wanted, and the boy skipped off happily on his adventure. In town, he wandered into all the stores that had previously been forbidden to him, trying to take in all the sights he could before the day was over. All the time though, he also thought long and hard about how he wanted to spend his dollar, for he had only one to spend.

Eventually, the boy chanced upon the local ice cream parlor, its tempting flavors lined up in bins like paint on a palette - strawberry pink, cool minty green, bubblegum blue, and he knew that this was the pleasure he wished to partake in. The longer he stared into the window, however, the less certain he was about what flavor among this bounty he was going to choose. One moment, the raspberry ripple would draw his eye, the next, it seemed like all he wanted was chocolate fudge. The harder he tried to make his decision, the more it seemed to him that any decision at all was impossible, for having one flavor would mean abandoning all the rest.

And he looked mournfully at the dollar clutched in his palm, and then gazed towards the rapidly setting sun.