Fire Trucks Have Feelings Too

Poor Sparky: Katie ordered him because over at the house of one of his baby pals, Max about flipped over some kid's fire truck. He stood there for a half an hour (or so the story goes) grunting happily, ringing the bell, doing his mega-happy half-squats.

So we order the damn fire truck; it arrives and we stay up, putting it together. While I manipulate a screw through an hole, blindly, at an unlikely angle, I curse the engineer and think back to Christmases past when I drifted off to sleep to the sound of my Uncles, Aunts and Parents, on the drunk side of buzzed, trying to piece together our toys by morning. This was after, of course, my grandma had cajoled them into letting us all open a gift or two that night. Cripes, those really were the days, weren't they? Oh, youth!

Anyway, the next morning, we get Max up and come out to the living room after his breakfast. The way Katie has primed me, I figure I'm going see Max's eyes pop out of his head when he sees this fire truck. We set Max down and wait for the fireworks to begin. He kind of regards Sparky warily, rings the bell feebly and reaches out one arm. We follow the direction of his hand and out eyes trail to his new, true girlfriend: Veronique, the vacuum cleaner we purchased a few days before. . . also red.

Max, fickle is thy middle name.