ME

a couple of Sundays ago I was upstairs in my room reading and I heard the ICE CREAM MAN GO BY!!! of course it was Sunday so I did not run out and get ice cream. But if it was any other day I wanted to run down stairs and beg my mom for money and then go and chase him.

When I was a little girl the ice cream man coming around was a big thing.. He just did not come around Greenbriar that much, like maybe one time a month.I have no idea why because when I was growing up there were SO MANY KIDS ON THAT STREET. So when we heard him coming we would freeze and get really quiet and then someone would shout THE ICE CREAM MAN!!!! and we would all run in and ask our moms for money and then go and chase him down and buy something, I remember a couple of times my mom did not give me and Brad ENOUGH money and we were the only kids on our street without any Good Humor, and that is not funny. One time I was very indesisive about what kind of ice cream I wanted and the ice cream man was like YOU NEED TO JUST PICK ONE! I thought oh my goodness you are the ice cream man you should be NICE!!!! Every time the ice cream man came for the next few days we would carry around our own change HOPING WISHING BELIEVING that he would come by again, but like I said he just did not come down our street a lot..so then finally we would put our change away or buy something else with it and then maybe a month later he would come by again and then we would repeat the whole process.

When I was on my mission in Southern California there were a few towns where the ice cream man was omnipresent. I remember the first time I saw one of them we were tracting and I said to my companion THE ICE CREAM MAN!!! she was like um so? and I said we should go get something!! She said no.. I then realized that the ice cream man in these towns comes by so MUCH that it is not a big deal like sometimes while we were tracting he would come by a few TIMES!! while we are tracting ONE street. like what the? like if you did not get enough the FIRST TIME or could not convince your mom 5 minutes ago... maybe you can NOW...and sometimes there would be COMPETING ice cream men.. like several in one neighborhood and there were even men that pushed CARTS of ice cream, once while tracting with Sister Christensen, we saw two with carts pass each other and they both looked at each other sooo mean like don't even THINK about going in my territory! DONT DO IT!

but ice cream men were not the only thing that came around on my mission there were people that walked around and sold every thing like seriously EVERY THING, corn, tamales, produce, candy, blankets, cookies.... so many things.
It would be really hard sometimes we would be at someones door and we would be like Hello we are missionaries from The Church of LDS and then the ice cream man comes by and some kids would be like ICE CREAM! and well there goes... what we were saying..

I wonder how that would have been as a kid to grow up with so many street peddlers and people selling things coming by?? As an adult it was exciting, then annoying when I realized how many there were, then just backround noise. like on just one street in one town we passed like TEN, TEN different people selling things! WOW

but that was a long time ago in California and now I am back in Virginia at my moms house... and if it is not Sunday I am totally running out to get ice cream:)...