A Different Reality (Lasting Love)

Father and son

"Daddy, where we going?" Ben asks for the hundredth time "The car is boring."

"I know it is, but you're going to love it when we get to our surprise.  We get a whole day to do things you love."  I hand him my phone to play with and he gets quiet again.  He turns on some obnoxious video that I try my hardest to ignore. 

The video ends a few minutes later, and soon after that I hear Ben snoring.  I laugh at him, knowing he got that from me.  He may not look too much like me anymore, but he definitely mirrors all my actions, wanting to be exactly like me.  He's going to be so happy when we get to the trunk land place, and I think I'm even more excited to see his expressions.

I pull into the parking lot, following where I'm told to go, and find a spot.  Ben is still asleep, so I get my phone from his car seat to text Jen and let her know that we're here.

"Wake up, buddy.  We're here."  I gently lift him from his seat "It's time to see your surprise."

He clings onto me, still tired, and I walk into the event.  I hold him so that he can see what we're here for, and the second he sees the monster trucks, his eyes get huge with excitement.  He jumps around in my arms, begging me to put him down so he can run off and explore everything.

"Look, daddy!"  He points to one that he wants to see better "It's big!" 

"I think we should get one."  I suggest "It would look perfect in our yard, right?"

"Yeah!"  He agrees "This one!  I love it so much.

"Let's see if mommy says yes."  I take a picture of him standing in front of it to send her.

"Mommy love too?"  He asks after a while.

"I don't think so, she said it's too big for our house, but you can play with it while we're here." 

I walk him over so that he can climb around on the truck.  He runs in front of me, climbing up the little steps by himself, and gets situated on one of the seats.

"Daddy, hurry up!" He yells down to me.  I climb up to where he's sitting and join him, taking pictures of how excited he is about everything. 

"Look at all the controls.  It's like you little monster truck toys."  I show him everything, and he wants to touch all of them right away. 

"There lots of lights."  He stands on my lap, leaving over to dashboard so he can see what each control does.  He tells me which button to push, and is infatuated with everything they do.

"Let's go to the other side.  They have dump trucks and bulldozers too.  You can play in them."

He jumps off my lap and runs as far as he can before realizing he doesn't know which way to go.  I laugh walking up to him and carry him over to a food stand so that we can eat first. 

"I want fries and ice cream."  He says "That my lunch."

I laugh, ordering it for him along with my food, "Just don't tell mommy, okay?  She won't like that."

"I love ice cream."  He looks across the table at me, smiling from ear to ear "It my favot."

"It looks like it's really good mixed in with you ketchup and fries."  I laugh at his little concoction "Are you sure you don't want another container for your ketchup?"

"It good like this.  You try."  He smothers a fry in ketchup and ice cream then hands it to me.  I reluctantly take it from him to make him happy and force myself to eat it.

"You're right,"  I try my hardest to swallow it without vomiting "It is good."

We finish eating, and he surprisingly is not sick from his "lunch".  I start walking over to all the other trucks that he was excited about earlier, but he gets distracted about halfway there and stops walking with me.  I quickly stop to see what he is doing, and he's just standing there watching a bunch of kids play in an area with truck toys and dirt. 

"Go play, buddy.  I'll stay here and watch."  I sit on an empty bench across from him and watch as he runs up to join the kids.  He grabs some rocks, helping them fill up one of the dump trucks so that they can dump it somewhere else.

He runs back over to me after the other kids finish playing and decides that it's time to go check out everything else.  We walk over and he points to everything, telling me what kind of truck they are and what they do.  He even tells me what their names are on the shows he watches all the time.

"It's moving!"  He runs over to the bulldozer "It has dirt!"

"Yeah, you can play with that one."  I pull him over to the line so that we can try it out too "You can move anything in those piles."

"I wanna move mulch." He says as we climb into the seats "You help."

I let him stand on me again as we move the scoop around to pick up the mulch.  We turn to the side to move it to the next pile and he watches closely as all the mulch falls out.

"That was really cool, right?"  I ask as we walk out of the park "Did you have fun today?"

"Yeah!  I wanna go back soon."  He says as I put him in his car seat "Tomorrow?"

"I don't know about tomorrow, but we'll come back soon." I hand him my phone and some toys to play with "Are you excited to tell mommy and your sisters about how much fun you had today?"

"Yeah, I'll tell them all about it."