My son and monster trucks

My son is about 2 and a half now. For the past 6 months or so, his favorite character in the world was Jay Jay the Jet Plane. He loves the show, and most of the characters. He has toys of Jay Jay and Snuffy, and quite a few DVDs of the show, too, for when it isn’t on. Jay Jay to him is like Battlestar Galactica to me.

Or rather, it was. Things have changed. My son’s relationship with Jay Jay the Jet Plane has taken a rather hard blow in these past weeks. About two weeks ago, his grandma was looking for a cartoon he could watch. While channel surfing, she landed on the Speed channel. What was on the channel at that time changed everything: Monster Jam. The show consists mostly of monster trucks doing freestyle; this consists of giant trucks crashing into trailer homes (unoccupied, of course), jumping over cars, and quite often, having their wheels ripped off and their bodies smashed. Suffice to say, my toddler quickly fell in love.

Since that time, I’ve heard very little from my son besides “truck”. Some examples:

Me: “Would you like something to eat?”
Him: “Truck!”

Me: “It’s time for your nap bud. Let’s go.”
Him: “Truck!” (while pointing emphatically at the television which is off)

Me: “Please don’t play with your trucks on that, it’s fragile. You could break it!”
Him: “Truck!”, in a tone which clearly says, “dad, this is a truck, therefore I can play with it where ever I want!”

He is, quite honestly, obsessed. For Christmas he got lots of, you guessed it, trucks. He now is the proud owner of three differently sized Gravedigger trucks, along with some other trucks of different makes, and a firetruck, and some assorted cars. This morning when we were opening presents, it was interesting to watch how he worked. He’d grab a present and shout “truck!” He’d then start to open it. If he found that it was a truck, he’d continue unwrapping it then play with it for a while. If he found that it was not a truck, he’d basically toss it aside and move onto a different package. Eventually he was carefully picking out the packages that were shaped like the packages that his previous trucks had been in. Sneaky.

If you have kids, let me know what they’ve been obsessed with over the years. I know I was a huge fan of the Ghostbusters, as well as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.