There was something so big on his mind for someone so small.

As we walked to school, it seemed the weight of the world was dragging him down, even more so than his oversized backpack.

Eventually I asked him what was up.

He told me it was complicated.

“Try me,” I said.

He kicked a stone. Then gradually, as he spoke, his problems began to unravel like pulling a loose thread on a jumper.

“If I do all my jobs this week without being told, could I have $1.80?” he asked nervously.

I immediately flashed forward about 10 years, and pictured a taller him asking to borrow the car so he could go to the Big Day Out with his mates.

In his mind this was a mighty ask.

There was a pause where nobody spoke. We watched a young bearded dragon scurry silently along the top of a low brick fence.

The lizard stopped and tilted its head inquisitively at us.

For the eight-year-old, it was his guardian angel.

I could almost hear it communicating with him telepathically. “See, it wasn’t that hard,’’ it said, before returning to its guise as a normal reptile and vanishing in the pursuit of small insects.

I crunched an apple and chewed over my son’s request. We both swallowed.

Then I told him that what he proposed sounded entirely reasonable.

His backpack was growing lighter by the second.

“What do you need it for?” I asked.

“It’s my turn to buy the iceblocks,’’ he said.

He was in over his head with the schoolyard iceblock shout and it was time to square up.

The more things change, the more they stay the same and schoolyards, it seems, are still run on an iceblock-based economy.

In my day it was the Sunnyboy index. From what I can gather, the Zing talks these days.

I began to learn more.

They’re 60 cents each, or the tuckshop ladies can give you one “cut in half” for 30 cents.

They’ve taken the best ones away. The red fizzy ones. Apparently some Preppies were getting their hands on them and going a bit crazy.

They’re kind of “milky” and “icy” and they taste better than Zooper Doopers.

That’s a big call, because I remember how good Zooper Doopers were.

Zooper Doopers have been around for yonks and it was always impossible to eat one without smiling, even when the plastic tube wrapping was cutting the corners of your mouth. They were an icy anesthesia for all life’s ills.

Mmmm. I can taste my childhood again.

Here are some more random memories frozen in time.

Melting Moments: Our little sister, Anna, who enjoyed a neat school uniform more than my brother and I, would always hand her Billabong over when it started to drip.

On the way home from school in the family LJ Torana, Dad would sometimes stop at the corner store on Dry Dock Road, where he’d buy tobacco and papers for himself and icy poles for us.

I’m not overly proud to say that I was guilty of sneakily winding the car windows down to direct airflow in her direction to hasten the melting process.

The Sunnyboy Shuffle: There was a knack of rapidly flexing and releasing an opened Sunnyboy to create the friction necessary to release sweet syrup from the pyramidal treat.

This would be collected at the bottom of the packet for slurping down at the end before tearing the wrapper apart to check if you had won a freebie.

Over-exuberant flexing could result in the iceblock ejecting itself completely from the packet and bouncing on the school quadrangle. However, any unnecessary grit collected in the event of this occurring, could be easily enough removed at the bubblers.

I have dozens more, but I might keep them on ice for another day.

The wash-up with my son’s dilemma is that I agreed to dig him out of the troubling Zing thing he was in.

He was granted an on-the-spot advance loan and has promised to do all of his jobs in return.

We’re still waiting for him to deliver on that front.

It’s possible that his mother and I might hear the request about the car keys before we ever hear the end of how hard it is for him to pick up all the Lego from his bedroom floor.

And we already know what we’re going to say.