Play Cars: The Genesis

Those of you who have seen Jones in the last two months can attest to the kid's o.b.s.e.s.s.i.o.n. with cars: cars of all shapes, makes, sizes, levels of maintainence, types of media, whether they be touchable, affordable, real or make-believe.

These pictures are the birth of the obession.

He's playing with his friend Robin's die-cast miniatures of a silver Porsche Boxter convertible and blue Audi TT (yes, I know the make of every car imaginable now). As kids cars go, these things are pretty top of the line with opening doors and pull-back motion and every detail like the real, big, thing. Well, here Jones stood, sat and sauntered around this bench playing with these cars for what felt like an hour, totally engrossed doing stunts and races, and only breaking every now and then to see if Robin, Aniko and I had 'wandered off'.

We, of course, HAD to get Jones some posh minis like Robin's the next day - of course, by 'we' I mean 'me' - which we did, and, for the first time in his two and a half years, Jones Ray had a 'luvvie'. He's never had a favourite blanket or stuffed animal or towel or shirt or anything that he's been attached to - other than us - until these cars. He'd never asked to take anything to the park with him or taken anything to bed, until the night he got his fancy minis. That night, he brought all five of them (they come in a box of five for a fiver!) to bed, kissed them, and tucked them delicately under the duvet on the pillow next to him.

The next day, while Angus was reading the BBC News site, Jones spotted a report on the Tesla, the new, super-fast electric sports car. They watched it. Then they watched is again and again and again and again and again. Then Angus found a review of Tesla on the extremely popular UK TV show for so-called 'petrol-heads' Top Gear...

Top Gear is neither a cartoon or a kids show (as my dear friend Michelle had assumed). No, it's pretty much the biggest man-car, car-man love fest you could imagine(British style, however, meaning man-car love with witty humour and significantly fewer references to bikinis, bad beer and monster trucks). Jones knows all the presenters' names and preferred vehicles...he says the theme song is one of his favourites...and he'd rather watch it than Little Miss Sunshine right now...honestly, we haven't let him watch all that much.

We DON'T have a car...

We DON'T have any plans on getting a car...

*gulp*...after being in the States for three weeks WITH a car this April, I am worried that Jones is planning his escape back to 'civilization'.