It makes no difference if it's a random warm day in April, May or June - as soon as the doo, doo, doo, dee, doo, dee, doo starts making its way down the street for the first time my kids jump out of their seats, and their skin, with excitement for the ice cream truck. We relived that moment again tonight at 5:50 p.m. - bad timing! It truly is something out of a comedy movie...except the memories I have of the ice cream truck goods are slightly different.
Ice cream sandwiches. Pushups. Canon Balls (or screw balls depending on where you're from but it's the sherbert with the gum ball at the bottom). Strawberry Shortcake.
Tonight my son SCREAMED as he was running across our front lawn,
"SpiderMan! SpiderMan! SpiderMan!"
His sister was behind him,
"The Bunny! The Bunny! The Bunny!"
What?? Over the winter I removed from my mind the fact that the ice cream truck doesn't actually sell ice cream but food colored, super sugar, super sticky, super sloppy cartoon characters on a stick. AND I forgot that these drip down my children's arms and hands and the dye doesn't come off no matter how hard you scrub!
So, I dished out $6 (ouch) to see the smile on my kid's faces. I also played "Mom" and put the ice cream treats in the freezer and reminded them they were mid-bite at dinner and would have to wait. The anticipation was killing them as they forced down the healthy tidbits on their plates, so I took advantage of the moment and told them that they should not expect that every time the magical sound comes around the corner that I will be running behind them with my wallet because we have plenty of treats in our house and that an ice cream from the ice cream truck is a special treat and today was okay because it was the first time - *sigh*
My husband was standing at the sink with a huge grin - as if to silently say "you sound just like your mother" but instead he said,
"Womp, womp, womp, womp, ice cream. Womp, womp, ice cream. Womp, womp"
He's right. I'll be scrubbing off red dye #40 from their hands all summer.
2 comments:
In our house we have a jar of loose change that I frequently change into dollar bills, (via my wallet and secretly put the coins in the piggy banks) this way the kids can check the jar, if we have money for the ice-cream truck we can get something. This way we have dedicated ice-cream truck money. I imagine that with the price of gas the cost of sugar on stick is going to be quite high this summer.
Sigh---the ice cream truck doesn't hit our street anymore. This kind of bums me out!
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