The Fetching Ice Cream Man

There are three ice-cream trucks that come to our neighborhood.  

One is just a guy on a bike that has a cart and umbrella attached to the front.  He sells candy and weird Mexican chips that are revolting.  He pedals down the street ringing his little bells, and we pretty much ignore him along with everyone else on the street.  Kinda sad, actually.

Then there's the white truck.  That man comes around and tempts the kiddies with all kinds of ice-cream treats that cost anywhere from $1.00 to $3.00.  I know that $1.00 for an ice cream bar that is normally sold in a box of ten for four dollars is a rip off, but I'm willing to pay it.  But $3.00 is taking it too far.  And what do the kids always want?  The ice-cream that costs $3.00.  So we only bought from him once.

Finally we have the big, yellow truck that plays music so loud we can hear it ten blocks away.  Everything that Yellow-Truck Ice-Cream Man sells is $1.00.  Everything.  That makes my life so much easier because I don't have to tell the kids which items they can pick.  They just point to the picture of what they want and hand the man their dollar.  Or their four quarters, or their six dimes and 8 nickels, or whatever I could scrounge from the bottom of my purse.  

Early in the summer I wanted to encourage this $1.00 Yellow-Truck Ice-Cream man to come back, so I let my kids buy an ice-cream off him every time he came.  But now he comes every day, and last week he came twice in one day.  Talk about greedy, right?  I've given this man about fifty dollars this summer, he needs to back off.

But it's even better than that.  

He now parks his damn yellow truck right in front of my house every day.  And he lets his music tinkle away while all the kids go running to get their money.  Pretty nasty trick if you ask me.  He should spread the love and park his butt in front of someone else's house for a change.

So last week I was sitting outside watching my kids play, and it became apparent that Trent was in desperate need of a nap.  So I hauled his 36 pound flailing body into the house, got him a drink and plopped him lovingly onto his bed.  Then I went back outside to watch the other kids play.

Two minutes later that freaking yellow truck showed up on our street, and sure enough he parked right in front of my house.  Again.  I glared at him, and then I turned and looked up in Trent's window.  Trent was standing on his bed so he could see out the window, and he had fat alligator tears streaming down his face because he was supposed to be napping, and there's the big, yellow truck that gives him ice-cream treats.

How could I not rescue him from bed?

But I'm going to get that ice cream man before the end of the summer.  Somehow, I will have my revenge.