Trucks, A Boy´s First Interest

Camilo lulls himself to sleep at night by naming his favorite trucks on repeat. In the darkness of a bedroom without windows with his legs and arms spread out making a star, out comes the parade, ¨Dump truck, boom truck, cement truck.¨ At some point the chanting ends, but I imagine his dreams are filled with large machines.

Although expected, the new interest came upon him instantaneously. After a year of his father playing in the sand with a toy excavator, Camilo simply kept to his shovel and the covering of his toes to watch them disappear. And then it came upon us like a thief in the night. The matchbox cars and red boom truck sitting on the bottom shelf untouched in the playroom transformed into favorites. 

Each car had its own function; roll it backwards until the wheels engage, press a button down to make it shoot, or simply roll it as straight as you can. The crayons and mostly blank coloring pages that littered the living room were replaced by cars spread in all directions. Our games of kickball in the house crept to a close as each car was either a possible landmine or a simple distraction.

But then it spiraled. We took a trip as a family downtown on our bicycles and found Camilo drooling as a crane worked to pick up pieces from the top of a building. The workers had unclipped yellow hard hats and climbed up the giant machine in their flip-flops. There was no coned off area, just a truck taking up the path, much more obvious than a cone or even a road sign. The crane hooked onto a stack of laminate and did its best to maneuver it to the truck bed without touching the 21 hanging electric lines. Camilo gawked and I tried to do my best to explain what was happening.

Then, everywhere we went, trucks and machines were there. We became unable to escape the house without seeing a motorcycle taxi or large bus go by. Construction sites seemed to be everywhere. I´m sure I ignored their presence before, but now I was seeing them for the first time, with new eyes. We’d take a walk down the street to the coffee shop and return two hours later after watching an excavator use his claw to push a sand dump truck out of the holes his wheels kept falling into farther and farther. Or we would go down to see the work happening at the overflowing river and Camilo would yell ¨su su¨ (you can do it!) to the excavator as he was scooping up concrete like dirt laying under the ripped up sidewalk. Passerbys would stop to smile at Camilo as though they were remembering fond memories of their own children. Others would get their cameras out and take photos of the boy sitting eternally in a squat position yelling at the big machines.

His favorite was driving the machines. We unexpectedly came upon a fairly clean junk yard as we retrieved yet again our damaged car. Excavators, flatteners, forklifts, tow trucks! He tried them all and now specifically asks to watch the videos on Papá´s phone from when he drove a truck.

Even though his fascination was growing rapidly, the magic came to him from a book borrowed from his friend. It was a Richard Scarry book all about cars and trucks and things that go. He started by pointing to all the buses and then started to connect his own cars with those on the pages. Now, whenever a visitor arrives, Camilo pulls out the book to a page with a cement truck and runs to his tub of cars and brings out his cement truck in his most proud posture. He usually goes on to show them his newly acquired dump trucks and tractors gifted to him from birthday friends.

I still don´t understand how it happened, but Camilo found his first love so fast. Now, our whole lives feel like a giant construction site and it seems that half the vehicles on the roads are big machines! This momma has her hands full learning more about tractors and machines to keep this little one going. He may not be able to name his colors or properly say his own name, but he can identify vehicles more accurately than most 30 year old individuals. What a hoot it has been.