When my first child was a toddler of nine months of age, there was an article in our newspaper that graphically described how a wee bairn of just nine months of age ran out to the ice cream truck, toddling along behind his brothers and sisters who had run out faster than he could. When he got to the street he fell down, unbeknownst to the ice cream man. The truck was already in reverse, coming back to serve the kids who had come out of their home shouting and hollering. Only now they were shouting to stop the truck. This, the driver expected, and continued backing the truck till he ran over the toddler.
Father described to the reporter how he picked up the corpse of his son, covered in blood and limp and lifeless.
I cried. I imagined myself picking up my wonderful, precious, irreplaceable little baby, who had just started walking too, and I cried more. I saw the father hugging his dead son, weeping and helpless to reverse the event, helpless to bring his son back to life, and I cried all the more. I cried all night and continued to sniffle and cry most of the next day, I so empathised with that man, and I cried for his son and his wife as well.
Later when the boys were a little older, the ice cream truck would come through our neighborhood and I wouldn't allow the kids to run out and get an ice cream. I pictured death and destruction around the thing, and I forgot what a joy it was to capture the ice cream truck and buy a simple ice cream off him. I didn't want to support the poor guy who made his living driving the thing around listening to the same obnoxious song blaring over his speaker day after day.
And I believe I deprived my kids of one of the little joys of childhood, and I am heartily sorry for such foolishness. Of course, they probably don't realize how much reinforcement I had from their father's keeping us on such a stingy, miserably tight allowance, since there was usually plenty of spare change lying around the house (though there wouldn't have been any if we had spent it on ice cream), but that was the sort of blind mindset I had. "Steve doesn't want me to spend money, therefore I can't." Never mind that Steve was spending every penny we had taking himself and his friends out to restaurants every chance he got, and putting the expenses on charge cards. Had we paid those things off for once and for all and not charged them back up again, we could have lived much better than we did, without the hysterical "Don't spend a penny!" mentality.
Well, this was part of that insanity. I'm sorry you kids had to pay for it.
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