Chasing Choo Choos: Show and Tell, part 1
Posted in Life @ The GrandPhotographySimon Wesley
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I’ve long been charmed by kids’ obsessions and wondered what kinds of things my kids would be into. Simon’s first real interest was in airplanes—in fact, he was so interested in them that I entertained the idea of redecorating his room; we went to every airshow we could find last summer. More recently we went through a period of time where we watched Buzz! (Toy Story) almost every day. I thought for a while that tractors were going to be his next big thing. Or maybe construction vehicles. But while he likes his tractors, his cars, his dinosaurs, his play kitchen, nothing has even come close to his fascination with trains.
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Simon’s love of trains had an admittedly rough start: for his first Christmas (he was eleven months old), he received a train that absolutely terrified him (the giver shall remain nameless to protect my sister’s anonymity). To this day, he still won’t play with the Devil Train, though he does cautiously visit in the corner every once in a while, and we recently learned that he knows its name (Debawh Choo Choo).
The real obsession, of course, started with Thomas: Thomas videos, Thomas books, Thomas t-shirts (his favorite piece of clothing to this day), Thomas for Christmas (redemption for the Devil Train gifter), Thomas for his birthday, Thomas for bedtime stories. And so on (and on and on).
A few months ago, his passion for all things Thomas expanded to include any and all kinds of trains. And that’s when my days became all trains, all the time. To be fair, Simon’s enthusiasm is contagious, and I find myself enabling his budding interest in ferroeqinology, and liking it. Trains—and much of their history and the culture surrounding them—are actually quite interesting.
I admit that we’ve altered some of our habits in order to incorporate more trains into our daily lives:
- In our almost-daily quest to find “choo choos go!” I have found two railyards in Lincoln (who knew?).
- Instead of trying to avoid being stuck while a train passes at a crossing, we actually slow down (or speed up or take a detour) in order to be first in line.
- We have begun taking Highway 6 every time we go to Omaha. The tracks run right along the highway all the way to Gretna.
- We watch lots of train videos on YouTube (literally videos that people have taken of trains crossing).
- We review colors by naming Thomas’s friends (Toby is brown, Gordon is blue, etc.) and numbers by counting cars.
Although it’s kind of staggering when I really start to think about how much we talk about, look for, watch, and play trains, I do think that it falls into normal two-year-old behavior. I don’t know yet if Simon will be a lifelong rail fan or if he’ll “move on” in a few months or years. For now, though, I’m really enjoying watching him learn and explore and collect and wonder.
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