The Need For Speed

There are moments in your life that are pivotal to your future, they shape you, dictate how you think about things, and sometimes can forever alter the course of your life. Sometimes they are obvious, like when you get married, or have children, or start a new job. And other times they are small, insignificant moments that you don't notice at the time, but when you look back on them you say, that's when it started.... Like when you smiled at that hot guy in church and ended up marrying him, or when you tried a new hobby on a whim and discovered your true calling. Or in my case, when I bought the movie Cars for my 2 year old son. And here you thought I was getting all philosophical....

It started out simple really, I was in Target with Aiden after work one day, and I decided that if I had to watch Finding Nemo one more time I was going to end up being committed. So I thought, I'll buy him a new movie for being such a good boy today, and we can watch something else for a while. So I thought, hey, Cars is cute, I could handle Cars. If I had only known the monster I was creating at that moment. I should have seen it coming, since as soon as he had a look at the cover, the words, "I buy this!" came out of his adorable little mouth. Well, since this was my first ride on the parenting merry-go-round, I just thought it was cute. So I bought it.

Now, imagine taking my obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, quadrupling it and stuffing it into a 2 year old, and you'll have an inkling of what I'm dealing with here. We have the Cars bedding set, the Cars pillow, the Cars books, the Cars plates, cups and silverware, the Cars shoes, the Cars hat, the Cars t-shirts, the Cars Pull-ups, and a metal "hot wheels" type car of almost every character in the movie. This is in addition to the 5 or 6 Lightning McQueens we have, in case one should get lost or left behind on one of our various outings. Lightning goes to bed with Aiden, he takes baths with Aiden, he goes into every room of the house that Aiden goes into, he goes in the car, and into every store he sets foot in. If we don't have Lightning, its a major, catastrophic, apocalypse. And I am not kidding. And the movie is starting to skip in places, it's getting worn out. Do you have any idea how many times you have to watch a DVD before it wears out?

Such is my son's obsession with this that I am actually considering painting Cars murals on the walls of his new bedroom when we move to Barstow. Seriously. I can just see the words, "float like a Cadillac, sting like a Beamer" above the bed. And since the boys are going to be sharing, I hope Jack likes Cars, too. If you had told me three years ago that I would one day know the entire movie by heart, complete with facial expressions and innuendo (and yes, cars do have facial expressions), I would have laughed in your face. Yeah right, I'm not going to let my kids watch a movie that often! Yeah, that's stupid. You can't fight fate. And in that spirit, Chris and I have decided to splurge on the Lightning McQueen Power Wheel that I found at Kmart the other day. It's on layaway right now, and its a good thing that it was in the box and not on display, because Aiden would never have let me leave the store without it if he had known what it was. At least, not without a fight.

So, looking back on the seemingly innocuous decision at Target a few months ago - Cars, why not? - I realize it was a pivotal moment in my son's upbringing. In my desperation to get him unobsessed with Nemo, I opened the door to something else entirely. Be careful what you wish for parents, you just might end up depleting your bank account.