No Pennies!

*Post inspired by the The Red Dress Club's remembeRED prompt, "What, from your childhood, do you still know by heart?"

Besides the obvious things, like the Pledge of Allegiance and "No cuts, no butts, no coconuts," I remember a lot of things from childhood.

Okay, maybe not a lot. I actually don't remember that many details. I'm the kind of person who, once I have no need for it, let's the information go to make room for all the other stuff that is thrown my way. It's also why I am horrible at remembering names.

Sorry new person in my ward who has probably told me her name at least five times and who I just call "you" because I'm too embarrassed to ask you your name. Again.

I do remember some silly, nerdy things, though. Like the tune of the Nintendo video game, Mario 1. Or the Gummy Bears theme song (sadly, I don't have the "secret" recipe for Gummy Beary Juice memorized anymore, though I did at one point).

But mostly I remember the haunting tune of blue ice-cream truck: me, my brothers, and my fellow neighborhood children's arch nemesis. There was Doyle, the one we loved and would save all our change for, but then there was the "No Pennies!" ice-cream man. The one who would speed down Sabre Lane and angrily throw our change back at us if it included too many pennies, yelling, "No pennies!" before screeching away again.

I also remember saving all of our pennies and trying to buy two dollars worth of goodies for that reason. Handing him that clear sandwich bag, nearly tearing from the weight of 200 pennies, and seeing that sweaty, Arabic mustache twitch in irritation brought a smile to my eight-year-old angel face.

I also remember that it takes five children's bikes to make a barricade in the street so that he cannot pass. With a waving fist, he turned that little blue music-mobile around and we, the neighborhood kids, cheered as though we'd just defeated a terrorist threat.

Needless to say, our tactics worked, because we never saw him again.