I Scream, You Scream

We had our first experience with a real ice cream truck on Saturday, in the city.

Mind you, we've played ice cream truck before. We have the one that Mama played with as a child, that her parents kept all this time, a real Good Humor truck with all the ice cream bars and coins still intact. And we've ridden and played with the pretend motorized one at the mall. What's not to love with these? You get to pretend to give people ice cream. I've even seen Bud and Sis play ice cream truck with megablocks and wooden nuts and bolts. And they make up fabulous flavors, some real, some absolutely imaginary.

But on Saturday, at Ar-Ma and Ar-Gong's house, as we were loading the car in the late afternoon to come home, I heard that familiar jingle. And, being a huge fan of the ice cream truck myself, from warm days after elementary school to hot summer days on our cul-de-sac, with rainbow snow cones and red/white/blue lemony rocket pops and creamsicle bars to candy offerings such as jawbreakers and gobstoppers, I knew we had to get some.

"I hear the ice cream truck!" And the kids came running down the driveway, never having seen the real thing (which is illegal in our town after a fatality a decade or so ago, I hear).

It stopped far away at the end of the block and we decided to wait til it passed us, giving us ample time to prep the kids and decide. In the excitement, Sis slipped off the sidewalk and scraped her elbow, a nasty boo-boo needing ointment and bandaids. But ice cream made it all better.

It was our turn. And the kids couldn't decide. Bud wanted strawberry, which they didn't have. He got a cherry dip cone, this electric pink-red monstrosity as big as his face. Which was soon covered in pink and red and white. Sis went for a regular chocolate cone, which she licked slowly and meticulously. I had a chocolate dip cone, with memories of Dairy Queen flooding back. Only Goo was game among the others, and he got a cherry dip too. Bud thought it was cool that they matched and insisted on sitting together.

So, having had a delightful day at the beach, then swimming in the kiddie pool at home where we played catch with water balloons (then later, how can we burst a water balloon?), and a BBQ chicken lunch (plus noodles and other good things), we finished the day with ice cream. A real ice cream truck. The stuff memories are made of.