Leo Keeps On Truckin

We used to hear the words “mama, mama” droning through the tiny speakers of our bedroom baby monitors like clockwork sometime between 6 and 6.30 each morning. Leo is 20 months old now, and more frequently we’ll hear the words, “truck, truck!” The boy has a single-minded obsession with trucks. You know how they say that men think about sex something like once every 12 seconds? Well Leo thinks about trucks just as often. From the moment he wakes up, until bed time when he makes his last desperate pleas to just watch one more truck video, or look at one more book about trucks, the boy lives for trucks.

We got him one particular truck video from the library called “20 Trucks” which he’d be quite content to watch all day if we’d only let him. Leo already knows how to put a DVD in the player, so if we won’t put it in for him after he whines “truuuucccckkk, truuuuuuuuuuuuaaaahcccck”, “get …truck… on” 50 times, he tries to take matters into his own hands. One of the twenty trucks- #18 to be precise-is the most exalted and glorious of all trucks, the monster truck. Leo is mesmerized by scenes of monster truck carnage- he particularly likes a scene where a monster truck named Bigfoot smashes a bunch of parked cars. He likes to say “mons, mons” meaning, go back to the scene with the monster trucks. The DVD has a theme song which haunts me in my sleep……

Can you name 20 trucks? Well I bet you can. Come on and try it now- lets all clap our hands! A tractor-trailer hauls a heavy load, a great big snowplow cleans snow off the road, I see a dump truck, its bed goes up and down! There goes a bus-taking people through the town; The Cee-ment mixers drum spins round, and round and round!

Man, I am such a loser for knowing the words to this song. Welcome to parenthood. No idea why the singer pronounces cement as See-ment, but you realize we are not dealing with a Lenin/McCartney wordsmith here.
Since the boy loves his trucks so much, I’ve resolved to take the boy to a live monster truck race soon. Luckily, we live right near Indiana, so we’re in a monster truck hotbed here in the Midwest.

He’s the proud owner of a huge variety of trucks himself- dump trucks, garbage trucks, pickup trucks, tractors, fire trucks, jeeps, tankers, and forklifts. You name the truck, and Leo’s got one. At least. He’s so proud of his fleet that he loves to walk up to strangers and hand them one of his trucks for their approval.

Recently, he sat in another kids toy car at the playground and wouldn’t get out of it, so we went to one of the most dismal places in the world- Toys R Us- to get him the same one. Toy stores should be fun places- we have a small independent store in nearby Oak Park that is great, they actually have lots of toys out for kids to play with. The only problem with them is that they only have high quality toys that appeal more to adults than to children. Toys R Us, on the other hand, pretty much just has row after row of boxes of crap. All made in China, and yet completely irresistible to a 20 month old. For some reason the Toys R Us near our house is always filled with people who look like they might be carrying some kind of developing-world communicable disease (I swear that the swine flu actually started at this store, but no one believes me), and the people who work there are surly and ignorant. Welcome to Toys R Us; now leave us the fuck alone. We brought Leo to the area of the store with the large sit-in toy cars, and, predictably, he was most taken with the largest and most ostentatious and expensive one- a $399 Hummer! We got him the equivalent of a Yugo for $40 and slunk out, reassuring him that it would get much better gas mileage. What a country we live in.

Leo’s a lot like his dad in many ways- he’s impatient, has a short attention span, is prone to rude or simply irrationally angry outbursts, blunt honesty, impetuous behavior, and likes to demand things he doesn’t need- but, unlike his dad, he still believes in the inherent good nature of humanity. He’s more than happy to amble up to even the most dangerous looking vagrant and say, “hi!” Most adults are quite nice to him, but not all kids are.

We accompany Leo to the playground every day and enjoy observing him with the other kids, most of whom are older than him. Sometimes it breaks our hearts though to see him approach other kids and enthusiastically say, “hi!” only to be ignored, or worse, told to get lost or pushed away. It probably doesn’t help that we live in a high-income neighborhood- don’t ask me what we’re doing here- with a high spoiled brat quotient. Leo is treated like such a prince at home, and by nearly every adult he sees, so he perceives the world to be his oyster and is surprised when he’s rebuffed by other kids. Nonetheless, he takes it in stride, even if he has to pick himself up off the ground after being bowled over by an older or bigger kid. We’re the ones that get our feelings hurt, not him.

Leo’s second obsession after trucks is his mom’s pregnant belly, which has now swelled to a 6-month bulge. “Tummy, tummy,” he’ll say, even if we are in a public place, meaning that he wants my wife, Jen, to lift her shirt and let him cuddle up against her stomach. He used to be obsessed with two body parts right above the tummy, and occasionally he still is, so the tummy kick is a welcome break for his mom.

Everyone knows that I have a penchant for using foul language at times, and Jen has been particularly concerned that Leo would pick up on some bad words. She herself rarely swears, so I took particular pleasure in the fact that she slipped up first, before me, a few weeks back. She said, “shit”, and he repeated it. He doesn’t use the word often, but he does use it judiciously and on appropriate occasions. For example, one afternoon he was watching his beloved truck DVD on a laptop while tapping away at the keyboard randomly. Eventually he pressed a key that stopped his video and we heard him say, “oh shit.” His non-swear word vocabulary has also been growing by leaps and bounds. He likes to say “ no money” and “no candy” even though he really likes both money and candy.

I can’t say that Leo is much of a gourmand, but he does like some unusual dishes for a boy his age: hummus, guacamole, trade joe’s chicken curry sticks, and pasta with pesto sauce are a few of his favorites. One of his favorite tricks is to say, “all done!” as soon as we put him in his chair before he’s even eaten anything. If this doesn’t work he’ll try to demand a Starburst fruit chew, a cookie or an ice cream cone. We used to be able to take Leo out to eat, but these days it’s a bit of a lost cause, because we end up spending most of the meal policing him as he runs rampant around the restaurant. As soon as he’s had enough of whatever he’s eating, he immediately wants out of his hi-chair and will start demanding, “go, go!”

Leo is also an extraordinarily delightful young chap who will gladly come by for a hug, and will occasionally even call us “cute.” We have a nice little mutual admiration society, just the three of us, and Leo gets along with everyone, especially people who can name at least 20 trucks. Can you name 20 trucks? Well I bet you can.