The Ill-humored Ice Cream Man

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Strangely, it’s not as bad as it sounds. After only an hour or so the music stopped bothering me, and it never did again. It’s as though the receptors in the driver’s brain that process “The Entertainer” just get burned out. You don’t even know it’s there.

The other distressing reality the driver has to contend with is the never-ending cavalcade of children. God knows, I’ve never been the world’s biggest fan of these little hellions (during my tenure on this job, a friend took to calling me “the ill-humor man”), but it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which you could see the youth of America in a worse light. People have this idea that children are born into the world innocent, trusting souls, full of charity and the milk of human kindness, and that society corrupts them as they grow into adulthood. Nothing could be further from the truth. Children are born perfect little greed machines, free of any decency whatsoever. They have all the moral feeling of a jackal at a fresh kill, and their single-minded pursuit of the pleasure principle, at any cost, is doubtless the envy of sharks worldwide.

Oh, in twos or threes they’re all right. God knows, one gets tired of being asked “What do you have that’s free?”—a sterling example of child wit—but small groups are manageable. It’s when they descend in scores, as full-throttle Lord of the Flies mob psychology kicks in, that you have to be careful. They try to break into the cooler. They try to steal your money and cigarettes. They steal each other’s money. On at least one occasion they started shaking the whole truck as if to turn it over.

Sometimes it’s best just to hop in the truck and bolt, although there appear to be few stronger drives than the drive of a child to hurl himself under the wheels of an ice cream truck. (The driver is, of course, legally liable for any trampings, stab wounds, or other mishaps that his presence may incite.)

Still, it’s precisely the deep and abiding appetite of the kids that makes the whole thing such a sweet scam for the operator. Daily cash that comes in pretty much under the table is hard to beat, though if I were a parent I might want to consider exactly what type of person needs about 60 dollars in cash every day. Perhaps the most telling, if embarrassing, recommendation of this job is that I went back and applied for it again at the beginning of this summer. They never called me back. Bastards.

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