One glance wasn’t enough. I had to look again to make sure I wasn’t seeing things, but I was right the first time. 

It wasn’t even 6:30 in the morning, and a child really was sitting in the front seat of a car licking an ice cream cone.

The shock quickly gave way to jealousy (where was my ice cream?!) and then to a potent dose of nostalgia. 

Remember kid summers?

When you could eat ice cream at 6 in the morning, spend 90 percent of your days shoeless and wander around in a sweet cloud of sunscreen, chlorine, sweat and Popsicle? 

When your days centered around trips to the closest water and your nights around a jar full of flickering lightning bugs? 

Those summers began on the last day of school and stretched out over a series of hot, sticky weeks until you were forced once again to put on real pants, shove your feet into a brand-new pair of stiff sneakers and hoist that backpack over a shoulder. 

And oh, they were glorious, weren’t they? 

It was a time when you didn’t stress over putting on a bathing suit. Who had time to evaluate your body in the mirror when you had water to splash in?

It was a time when nothing felt better than the wind whipping your hair back and forth as your bike wheels flew down the hill and all it took to keep you entertained was a swath of concrete and a pail of sidewalk chalk. 

Like most memories of the past, I’m sure mine are rose-colored, the passage of time adding a pinkish tint to obscure the darker days. Scientists have found time and again that we subconsciously minimize darker memories as a means of self-preservation. 

Some of those kid summer moments weren’t so good. 

But those that were good weren’t just good. They were “licking an ice cream cone at 6 in the morning” level magic. 

And we’ve been chasing that high ever since.