The Ice-Cream Man

As I'm sitting here on the computer, avoiding that load on laundry in the dryer, I hear an old familiar noise. I think to myself....no, it couldn't be.......yes, I think it is. It's the Ice-Cream Man! I hear his lovely truck cruising through our neighborhood playing the most appropriate song for springtime: "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer." He's so with it!

When I was a kid, I remember being so excited for it to be summer and to running around outside with my neighborhood friends. Then the Ice-Cream Man would pull down our street and we'd all wave/chase him down and pay our $0.50 for a fudgesicle, choco-taco or ice-cream sandwich. It would melt fast and make a sticky mess and it was great!

Then we moved out to the BL - and the first summer here, I was quite pregnant with Andrew. One hot summer day, I hear the Ice-Cream Man pull down our cul-de-sac. Yeah!!! I grab a couple bucks, and quickly waddle outside to get his attention before he drives away, and this is what I'm faced with:

This is NOT the nice old Ice-Cream Man I remember from my childhood. This isn't even close. I come to a screeching halt. He sees me. Oh, crap! We've made eye contact. He slowly circles around and rolls his beater truck up to me (which has some really clever advertising - the word "ICE CREAM" painted on the side with spray paint) and now I feel obligated. I'm trapped. I feel like I must complete this transaction because, well I've got cash in hand, I'm pregnant and I ran outside as fast as my swollen feet could carry me.

He gets out, saunters toward the back of his truck, where he opens a Coleman Cooler full of god knows what, and asks:

"What would you like today, little lady?"

I think to myself: "How about a non-child molesting ice-cream man? Ya got any of those in your Coleman cooler?"

That's what I really wanted to say.

But instead I ask for the first thing I see, pay the creepy man and waddle back inside my house just as quickly as I came out. And promptly threw the half melted treat in the garbage.

When Andrew was old enough to know what the ice-cream truck was, I lied to him. I told him that truck wasn't so much an ice-cream truck as it was a music truck. And then we started talking about "stranger-danger." As long as we live here, I will not let my children purchase a darn thing from the Ice-Cream Man.

Plus, although I don't have concrete evidence, I'm pretty sure that this man's truck doubles as the Meth-Mobile during the fall and winter months.

(Disclaimer: The picture shown above is not of our ACTUAL Ice-Cream Man. The man in the picture has teeth. My Ice-Cream Man does not. However, I'm fairly certian that the two men are in fact related. Possibly first cousins. Who would have gotten married if one had turned out to be a girl. But the truck? Oh, that's the real ice-cream truck. Or Meth-Mobile. Depending on which month it is.)