Will It Make Helmet Wearing More Palatable?

In Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys, one of the title characters, Turner, is taken in by Mavis and Ishmael, an aunt and uncle after his father abandons the family and his mother's alcoholism renders her incapable of caring for him.  One day, he got between the Mavis and Ishmael when they fought.  Ishmael then took him to an ice cream parlour and told the attendant, "Bring this young man the biggest sundae you got."  To Turner, "every bite felt like a sock in the mouth." Later experiences--including time in "The Nickel Academy," a segregated juvenile "reform school" in Florida--reinforced his belief that "adults are always trying to buy off children to make them forget their bad actions" and leads him to a lifelong hatred of ice cream.

So it will be interesting to see what comes of what a fire department in upstate New York is doing.

Let's face it:  Most people don't like wearing helmets.  I, like other cyclists, wear one because I know the benefits firsthand:  When I crashed two years ago, the doctor told me that it would have been much worse if I hadn't been wearing mine.  In another incident years earlier, I flipped over and landed in a way that broke the helmet in half but left me just barely scratched.

And when a kid wears a helmet, it's almost always because a parent or some other adult made them wear it. 

In Brownville, the firefighters have teamed up with Lickety Split, a local ice cream shop, to promote safety.   As LS owner Eric Symonds explained, when a kids is"caught" by a firefighter or Symonds wearing a helmet, they'll get a certificate for a free kiddie ice cream.

When I read about it, I couldn't help but to think about Turner. After all, the ice cream--which most kids who aren't Turner love--is being offered as a reward for something they wouldn't normally do on their own.  Also, I wondered how they might feel about the promotion, knowing what prompted it:  the death of  a local boy whose bike hit truck towing a trailer.  

That said, I applaud Symond's and the fire department's effort, which will begin today and give out 100 certificates.