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It's fall, but somehow we were wearing shorts all weekend.  And the ice cream truck came around. In October. Now, I haven't seen the ice cream truck in our neighborhood more than twice before, ever, so seeing it in October was a surprise.  Such a surprise that I thought, "Who is this weird ice cream truck guy?"  And I don't know if this is helicopter-parenting paranoia, or just smart, but instead of handing Laura some money to get treats for herself and Hank and the neighbor girls while I watched from the front door, I went down into the street with them to supervise the transaction. I just thought, "He could grab one of these kids." And get this, when I got down there, to his van, the dude looked like a pedophile, straight from central casting.  It's hard to explain.  Forty-ish, white, slightly pasty, with an obsequious, even juvenile, demeanor.  Am I terrible?  It's just what I thought.  I am a big Gavin de Becker fan, so there it is.

And when he was gone, I said to Laura, "Don't you ever go near that truck.  If you see it again, come and find me.  We don't know who that guy is or if he's nice."  She said, "He was okay."  And I said, "We absolutely do not know that.  He didn't seem that okay to me.  And kids have been snatched off the street by ice cream trucks."  (Okay, I don't know if that last part was true, but I wanted to let her know what I was talking about, and I think it made an impression.)  So there's that familiar parenting feeling of, am I keeping my kids safe, or scaring them and adding a tinge of menace to normal childhood things? And haven't I managed to make a nice Sunday seem shadowed by danger?  The moment passed.

Laura organized the little kids into an elaborage cul-de-sac game called "Minitown."  They drew a town with chalk, and they each had a house.  Here they are at the Movie Theatre.  The movie is that Laura tells them the story of Aladdin.
 

Or, she told them half the story, then she got tired and told them to come back tomorrow and pay another dollar to hear the rest.  At Laura's feet is the admission she's collected.  Minitown had its own currency: leaves and acorns.  Everyone was rich as could be.  When you bought something at one of the stores, like a gerbil or a plant, Laura would come and draw it in your house.  It was a lot like an MMO game, without the need for computers or the monthly subscription fee.  Laura said, "Mom, do you know why it's called 'Minitown?'"  I said, "I think I do."  And she said, "It was founded by Charles Mini."

So all in all, a nice summerish-fallish day.  Then last night, all through the night and this morning, it poured rain (more rain? really?) and washed all the chalk away.  Goodbye, Minitown.