Run, run, run, as fast as you can. Look who's there. It's the ice cream man!

Nope, that's not a common childhood rhyme ... yet. But ice cream men quickly are becoming the go-to summer terror when parents want to be scared of something. Which, for some reason, they do. It makes them feel bigger and kinder, like a hungry-for-justice hippo.

So now a small town in Massachusetts called Seekonk has become the latest town to require a background check for anyone who drives his own ice cream truck. It'll cost the drivers $100 out of pocket, which is a lot of rainbow Icees. Come here, little girl ... and buy a $3.25 cup of frozen sugar water!

But of course, overpriced novelties don't seem to be the problem. As a member of the governing board told the Attleboro-Seekonk Patch, "it's an unfortunate fact of life that there are people out there like Jerry Sandusky who are only there to hurt people. And I certainly don't want to be responsible in any way for allowing the next Jerry Sandusky to get access to people."

Well, who does? Really, there aren't a lot of people signing up to make the next pedophile possible. But if you're going to start using Sandusky's alleged crimes as a reason to distrust all males who interact with kids, what's to stop you from distrusting all Jews in business after Bernie Madoff's crimes or all Muslims in America after Osama bin Laden's? Using a single creep in the news as a reason to distrust everyone with a similar background isn't being "careful." It's being a bigot. In this case, it's being a bigot against men.

But Seekonk is not the only community freaking out over the idea of a man with a van full of ice cream. My state, New York, passed a law requiring ice cream truck background checks after a 2004 case in which one treat peddler did abuse a 9-year-old girl. Since then, cities in Florida, Arizona, Texas and South Dakota have proposed or passed laws requiring ice cream man checks.

Most recently, NBC's "Dateline" just ran a series wherein the producers set up hidden cameras to see whether kids could be lured into an ice cream truck. As if this is happening all the time. As if it's the rare ice cream vendor who's not using his van as a portable pervert pad.

NBC did not bother to point out that crime is lower now than it was when we were kids. In fact, crime just fell another 4 percent, as reported by the FBI this week!

Growing up, whenever I saw the Good Humor truck, my heart beat fast from not fear but excitement. Its gleaming steel hinges thrilled us kids far more than the ones on Brink's trucks did, because Brink's trucks did not drive around dispensing chocolate éclair ice cream bars. Every million and a half years, when the Good Humor guy finally wound his way onto our block, our parents didn't come rushing out with pitchforks. They gave us some cash, and out we flew.

To turn the ice cream man into a symbol of depravity is to chip away at summer itself — another reason to keep the kids inside. Ah, but their avatars can eat all the virtual ice cream they want, on the screen.

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)" and "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy ([email protected]) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.