Touch a Truck

Our town has this brilliant event once a year where they get all of the municipal equipment like fire trucks, street sweepers, a Bob Cat and a giant orange digger (for lack of a more accurate term) out in the park and let all of the kids from town check out the equipment from close up and even sit behind the wheel. As one of my Iowa relatives is known for saying, "Oh, my heart!" There were about 300 kids there who were in heaven. The event is aptly named Touch a Truck.

I think Touch a Truck might rank a close third behind Christmas morning and Halloween around this town in terms of popularity with the kids. To illustrate, one of my in-laws' neighbor boys who is 5 came running out of his house shouting at the top of his lungs to ask my mother-in-law, "MRS. L., ARE YOU GOING TO TOUCH A TRUCK?!?" My mother-in-law got a kick out of the idea that her neighbor boy assumed that of course everyone in town wouldn't be able to pass up the chance to touch an actual fire truck. It is the event of the season. So this year we marked the date on the calendar a month ago and made sure not to miss it. AJ met a couple of his buddies there, and while they were all mildly interested in the equipment, they were incapable of waiting in line for the 5-10 minutes that it took to get to the front of the lines to see the equipment. They range in age from 13 to 16 months, so they were toddling out of line to look at other kids/bugs/trash on the ground nearby, etc. The playground at the park was much more popular with the toddler set. Frankly, I think about half of the excitement at the event was really the parents getting to live out their fantasies--"Look, Jimmy--you can see how the firemen turn this switch to start the siren. How cool is that?" The dad was psyched.

In the end, we were able to take turns waiting in line so that we could snap a few pictures of the kids on the equipment.