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From Barbie to trucks, tools, Batman

A little boy’s world is a new place for me to be. Trucks, tools and Batman are all pretty new to me.

I grew up with Barbie. I knew everything about Barbie. I probably had more than 75 at one time or another. There was Pretty in Pink Barbie, Malibu Barbie, Day and Night Barbie, Peaches and Cream Barbie and Western Barbie, just to name a few.

I had a McDonald’s, a horse trailer and two horses (Dallas and Midnight), a Corvette and a swing set, all for Barbie and her friends.

Sure, my little brother had boys’ toys like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Ghostbusters.

But it wasn’t the same. I didn’t have to play with them like I do now. My brother played by himself. Little Man does too, for a little while. But then he wants Mommy to play, too.

My world is full of boys’ toys.

Now, we have more than 100 monster trucks. We have a garbage truck, fire truck and dump truck that talk and dance and interact with you.

My husband made Little Man his own garage to keep all his vehicles, and they still don’t all fit inside.

We have a tool bench and all sorts of tools to go with it – hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches. And those are just the ones I recognize. We have a chain saw that he wants to use to really cut wood. When it wouldn’t, he wanted the blade sharpened and was disappointed when it still didn’t cut wood like Daddy’s did.

We just recently got into Batman and friends. Santa brought the Bat cave and Bat mobile. Our friends from Akron bought him the Penguin mobile (Penguin included) and Spiderman’s home. His Nana and Pappy got him the Gotham jail and Joker mobile (Joker included). The jail even has cells with the bad guys’ pictures on them. And, of course, there are four cells, and we only have two of the bad guys. Now we are in need of the other two (surprise, surprise.)

Santa also brought a Little Mechanic’s engine. It is an engine that you take apart and put back together again. Little Man is very good at it. When I tried once, he told me that I couldn’t do it because I was a girl. I got it together, but he said it wasn’t right because the tires fell off, which they did.

And it’s true when the say “the only difference between the men and the boys is the size of their feet and the price of their toys.”

Little Man has his eye on a remote controlled truck because the four that we have aren’t enough.

He wants a battery-powered four-wheeler in blue, since the red one we have isn’t good enough. He wants some ride-on toy that he saw at the store, because the tractor and the Gator aren’t enough. How many butts does the child have to ride with?

And now we are on the verge of bringing another little boy home.

Just when I thought we had had enough trucks

(Letusick, a resident of Rayland, is a copy editor for the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times.)

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