Most of people have a memory of the ice cream truck coming by and the excited feeling you get knowing you were about to get something off the ice cream truck, YAY!

Well that’s for most people. I admit I used to feel the same way. UNTIL…. Living in Las Vegas, NV we lived right behind a business that supplied ice cream trucks their inventory. Naturally they would frequent our apartment complex. Coming from small town North Carolina I was a bit naive to some of the dangers of the big cities, especially as a parent. We didn’t have ice cream trucks rolling through the back woods of small town America. At least not in the small towns I had experience with. When the ice cream trucks would come through a lot of the neighborhood kids would gather their change and head towards the ice cream trucks. I would give my children a little independence when the truck came to our part of the complex. It usually parked right outside of my apartment so I could stand either at my front door or my bedroom window and look right at the ice cream truck and the children.

I guess at some point I may have gotten a little complacent because the normal visit from the ice cream truck wasn’t just the “norm”. There were probably 10 plus children around the ice cream truck. At some point the guy inside the ice cream truck seemed to single out Dusty for whatever reason. Kayla was out there with him as always. The guy decided to try to coerce Dusty into getting into the van with him. He didn’t seem too worried with selling ice cream at that point. He just kept trying to get Dusty into the van with him. Kayla caught wind of what was really going on and was able to keep Dusty from getting on with the guy. Then if I recall correctly they came running in telling me what had just happened. As soon as I got an understanding of what happened I rush outside to find the truck already gone.

Kayla has always been her brother’s keeper and will always do her best to protect him. Granted she was maybe 8 years old she was smart enough to know what the guy was trying to do just didn’t seem right.

Even after that incident her instincts told saved her and a fellow schoolmate from someone trying to pick them up while walking from school. Ever since then I have always been a bit more protective when it came to them going to and from school or just playing outside. You think you have taught your children not to talk to strangers or even go with a stranger and then when something like this happens you start to rethink just what we are parents teach our children about “stranger danger”.

Since we’ve lived here in this small subdivision we’ve seen the ice cream truck roll through as soon as the weather starts to warm up. Now I know not everyone is out to get your children or even has any intentions on harming any child BUT…just like traumatic events in our lives they always leave that doubt, that memory and when you hear the sounds that remind you or anything that puts you in that defensive state of mind, you are on edge. It’s just apart of life. There are things for whatever reason or another that leave bigger scars on us than others.

For those reasons…we really don’t do the “ice cream truck” thing anymore. Besides, I don’t know if anyone else has noticed just how expensive something small and simple is nowadays. I’m not sure if it’s just inflation or greed but I would say $2.50 is too much for a child’s ice cream cone. Then when you add multiple children wanting something and those prices aren’t all the same you end up saying I’d rather take them to the grocery store and buy two boxes of ice cream than do the ice cream truck. Less expensive, still have ice cream, and don’t have the anxiety every time you hear Christmas music in the dead of summer while blaring from the ice cream truck.

Have they not figured out a different set of tunes to play?