The Mystery of the Fairfax County Ice Cream Vendor

Today at lunch I was asked how I liked my new neighborhood. What immediately came to mind was the break-in that happened just days after I moved in, the totaled car that has been sitting across the street for over a week, and the swarm of police cars and officers surrounding my building Saturday night. I don't like those parts of my new neighborhood, so I decided I would leave out those details and just tell them about the girl across the street who heard the ice cream truck and came bolting out of her building, fumbling through her wallet. As comical as that was on its own, it got even funnier when I saw her about ten minutes later sharing an ice cream cone with her boston terrier. I think her excitement for ice cream and willingness to share it with man's best friend makes up for all the recent unsettling events.

My ice cream story led to a conversation about ice cream trucks. My boss said that as a child she called her ice cream man the "goody bar". While trying to understand that nickname, I had a flashback to elementary school. My neighborhood had an ice cream truck driver that would come by every day during the summer months. My mom ran a daycare from our home, so we always had kids around. Kids love ice cream, and ice cream men love kids that love ice cream. Back then, kids played outside, and when we'd hear that melodic siren, our mouths would water and we'd climb down from our respective trees, throw down our bicycles in the grass, take a universal time-out from our game of tag, or hide the different leaves that we had been collecting and designating with monetary values to develop our own system of currency (oh, was I the only kid that did that?). We'd then run inside to beg for some change, then chase down that ice cream truck no matter how many blocks away it was at that point. All of our scrambling would leave us short of breath, even a bit disoriented, and perhaps this is what led to what I am about to tell you...

In the years that we kids did business with this ice cream vendor, there was always uncertainty lurking within that boxy ice cream truck. Sometimes I even wonder what I was hungrier for as a child--a chocolate sundae or to discover the secret of this mysterious ice cream purveyor. Our issue was that we never could quite tell whether our beloved ice cream provider was an ice cream man or ice cream woman. Oh, a few of us argued one way or the other, but there was never a clear consensus. Not. even. once. To prevent any further debating, we decided it would be best to compromise. So, we tossed around a few ideas. One radical even suggested we stop buying ice cream altogether and never talk about the situation again. Yes, that idiot was me, and yes, the neighborhood bully assured me that I'd be cruisin' for a bruisin' if I ever suggested an idea like that again. Some wiser youngster suggested we give the mystery-gender a neutral nickname, and from that day on, we affectionately referred to our ice cream person as "the Ice Cream Shim". By affectionately I mean cruelly, and I still feel guilty about that, but heavens knows, I wasn't about to pipe up with any more silly ideas unless I wanted to get the Lunchables kicked outta me! To this day, I remember his/her face perfectly. I remember that sweet, androgynous voice telling me my strawberry shortcake ice cream was fifty cents. I still remember the Big Ben tune my hermaphroditic siren played that made the children of Centreville salivate. Beee boo beee boo, booo beee bee boo.

And, to this very day, I still do not know the sex of that wondrous ice cream merchant. However, as I have matured, I have come to realize that it has never mattered. The only things that truly meant anything in those days were that we ate ice cream daily and didn't count calories, amiright?