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Last Saturday, I took my granddaughters Maddie and Sarah, ages 6 and 4, respectively, to Athens for the day. The weather was perfect, the girls were in good spirits, and we had a great time.

At Maddie’s request, we ate lunch at Cali ‘n’ Tito’s, a funky, ramshackle Caribbean/Peruvian restaurant with outdoor seating and amazingly excellent food.

Thus fortified, we went to the Bear Hollow Zoo at Memorial Park. The zoo is small, but it has several black bears, a couple of bobcats, and an assortment of alligators, eagles, deer, and other critters. The girls enjoyed it.

Always thinking ahead, Maddie extracted a promise from me that we would stop to get yogurt on the way home.

Also at Memorial Park, beneath the trees in a picturesque setting, is a lake several acres in size, ringed by a paved walking path. Nearby are a picnic area and a playground.

When the girls spotted the playground, they of course sprinted toward it. By the time I caught up, they were climbing, sliding, and swinging with abandon.

A few minutes later, in the distance through the trees, I heard calliope music.

“Hey, listen,” I said, “Someone is playing music over there.”

“I hear it!” said Maddie. “It’s Pop Goes the Weasel!”

We rounded up Sarah and walked back toward the parking lot to investigate. I noticed other people doing the same thing.

The music was getting louder, closer, drawing us in like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Soon, the source of the music came into view: a garishly decorated ice cream truck.

“It’s an ice cream truck!” yelled Maddie. “I’ve never had ice cream from an ice cream truck!”

Sarah whooped and jumped for joy, too, although she probably didn’t know what an ice cream truck was.

The truck, actually a small van, came to a halt beside the playground. The driver turned off the engine, maneuvered himself into the back seat, and raised the service window, ready for business. We got in line.

As we waited to be served, Maddie and Sarah excitedly perused the menu, which was a banner draped on the side of the van. It was long on images, short on words.

Sarah made her choice immediately. “SpongeBob!” she shouted, pointing to a picture of a SpongeBob SquarePants ice cream treat on a stick. “I want a SpongeBob!”

“Okay,” I said, “What about you, Maddie?”

Maddie studied the banner at length, then selected a cone-shaped cup of fruit-flavored something. It was colored an intense cobalt blue.

Meanwhile, Pop Goes the Weasel was playing, over and over and over, through the van’s loudspeaker system. I found myself focusing on the four short refrains and noticing how quickly the tune became irritating.

After I placed the girls’ orders, I said to the driver, “I’ll bet you hear that music in your sleep.”

He looked up from rummaging through his freezers and nodded grimly. “Man, you got that right,” he said in a low voice. “I hate that song.”

I unwrapped SpongeBob and handed him to Sarah. On the stick, SpongeBob resembled the SpongeBob on the banner only faintly.

Sarah didn’t seem to mind. She began to nibble away contentedly.

I popped the top from Maddie’s cobalt blue whatever-it-was and handed it to her. She plunged a tiny wooden spoon into it, sampled it, and declared it fruity — berry flavor of some kind.

As the girls savored their treats, we slowly walked around the lake. Here and there, people were fishing and feeding the ducks and having lunch on blankets.

Suddenly, Sarah halted and yelled, “Aaaggh!!”

I turned in time to see her spit something high into the air. It was black and round and the size of a marble. It sailed about 10 feet and landed with a kerplunk in the lake.

“Sarah, what’s wrong!” I said in alarm.

“What was that?” echoed Maddie.

Sarah was leaning over with her hands on her knees, grimacing and energetically spitting on the ground.

“It was SpongeBob’s eyeball!” she managed between spats. “It was disgusting!”

“Hey — it wasn’t a real eyeball,” I told her, suppressing a chuckle.

“I know that!” she shot back. “But it tasted terrible! It was disgusting!”

Apparently, disgusting is a new word she enjoys using.

“Sarah, that eyeball landed in the lake!” said Maddie. “A fish or a duck might eat it!”

Clearly, that wasn’t Sarah’s concern. She turned to me and held up her one-eyed SpongeBob. “Rocky, pleeease take out his other eye and throw it in the trash can!”

By then, SpongeBob was beginning to melt a bit. Tentatively, I picked at the remaining eyeball with a finger, but it wouldn’t budge. Suction, probably.

“Rockeee!!” Sarah wailed, “Get it out!”

“Okay, Okay, I’m working on it!”

I took out my pocket knife, slipped the blade behind the eyeball, and out it popped.

I held the eyeball aloft and rolled it between thumb and forefinger. “It’s really light. Feels a little rough,” I said, “Sorta like a malt ball.”

Sarah wrinkled her nose with distaste. “It was disgusting!” she said. “Throw it in the trash!”

I dropped SpongeBob’s eyeball in the nearest trash receptacle, and we continued our circuit of the lake. Sarah returned to the task of nibbling on the now-sightless SpongeBob treat. Maddie continued to scoop the blue whatever-it-was from her conical cup.

Soon, Maddie reached the bottom of the cup.

“Hey!” she cried, “There’s something down there!” She probed into the cup with her spoon.

“It’s a gumball!” she announced. “They froze a gumball in here as a prize!”

She fished the gumball from the cup and held it up. “Sarah, I’ll bet SpongeBob’s eyeballs were gumballs, too! I think you threw away two perfectly good pieces of bubblegum!”

“Oh, man!” Sarah moaned.

She yanked at my arm. “Rocky, on the way home, can we go to Target and get some bubblegum from the machine?”

I gave her my generic reply to such requests: “We’ll see.”

Our stroll around the lake continued. The treats were history. Sarah was reduced to gnawing on SpongeBob’s wooden stick, Maddie on her tiny wooden spoon.

“Well,” said Maddie, “I guess we won’t be stopping for yogurt now.”

“Hey, Maddie,” I said, “Did you know your tongue is blue?”

“Is not.”

“Is so. Stick out your tongue. I’ll take a picture and prove it.”