#392 Catching the ice cream truck as it drives down the street

Candy doesn’t deliver.

Since Emperor Nero sent slaves into the mountains for ice to mix with honey and nuts two thousand years ago, we’ve all enjoyed cooling off with big bowls of the sweet and icy treat.

Yup, Arabs started adding milk to the mixture a thousand years later, the Chinese invented an ice cream maker, and our friends in France were first to write it down in a cookbook. Basically, everybody around Team Planet contributed to the unparalleled levels of creamy deliciosity we get to enjoy today.

Nowadays maybe you get your fix when the soccer team screams at mom from the back of the station wagon till she peels into the Dairy Queen parking lot. Or maybe you sneak down to the basement freezer for a few sneaky spoonfuls after bedtime.

Or maybe you actually catch a truck.

You know how it goes.

Scribbling on your stomach in your bedroom, playing Bubble Bobble with your brother in the basement, throwing baseballs around the backyard, your ears suddenly perk up to the sound of a distant and familiar jingling.

Eyeballs pop, eyebrows raise, and big smiles curl on your face because now the race is on.

Booming down the hall, bouncing down the stairs, you scramble for spare change as those jingling bells get louder and louder and louder. Forget socks, forget shoes, forget closing the front door — it’s time to blast out of the house and risk the Burning Blackfoot as you sprint as fast as you can down the street towards that slow-wheeling, rainbow-colored truck…