The Return of the Hot Wheels Cars

(Portland Brew, 7:15 a.m.)

Friday night, Joe had a friend and classmate from school sleep over.  Caldwell is a boy I've coached for the past three seasons, fall and spring, on Joe's baseball team.  Sweet kid and a gamer.  Loves to play catcher.  Hockey player, too.  He's younger than Joe by almost a year, I'm guessing.  It was Caldwell's first sleepover, so I was curious how it would go.

Well, it went great and the boys had a blast.  It's cool to see Joe having boys sleep over, since for so many years he's been a part of J.P.'s sleep overs with Cooper, J.D., etc.  I had never been around Caldwell for an extended period of time, so I was amazed at how talkative and outgoing he was.  Confident, too, which is a good and probably why he and Joe are a good fit.  Joe is almost always confident and sure of himself, sometimes a little too much so.

After dinner and watching part of a hockey documentary called "Pond Hockey" - very good, by the way - Caldwell and Joe went upstairs to play.  We gave them some space but after 20 minutes or so, I went upstairs to check on them.  To my surprise and delight, they were playing with the Hot Wheels cars.

Now, J.P. was probably more into the Hot Wheels cars than Joe ever was, probably because J.P. had to entertain himself more than Joe ever did.  Also, Joe has always tagged along with J.P. and wanted to play whatever he was playing.  By the time Joe was old enough to walk comfortably, J.P. was into sports and playing outside.  Joe simply followed him wherever he went.

Caldwell and Joe had put together a long stretch of Hot Wheels track with a loop near the middle.  They were sitting at both ends of the track, taking turns pulling cars (and trucks and ambulances) out of the Hot Wheels suitcase/storage box and seeing which cars (and trucks and ambulances) could make it through the loop and to the other end of the track.  Kind of like a Hot Wheels test kitchen.

As a kid, I loved my Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, and I bought a ton of them for J.P. when he was little.  Joe kind of inherited them.  I immediately sat down in the floor and joined them.  And, damn, it was fun to see them so excited to play with Hot Wheels cars - not Xbox, not iPad - Hot Wheels cars.  I couldn't stop smiling.

I guess there's a bit of Toy Story in this, although my sentimental streak has prevented me from watching Toy Story 2, 3 and 4.  The Hot Wheels cars and track, unused for years, suddenly experience a renaissance and are played with for a weekend, first by Joe and Caldwell, then by Joe and J.P. last night.  A trip back to a more innocent time.

My mom used to buy me Matchbox cars when I was a child, one at a time, that I think actually came in what looked like a matchbox.  I brought a ton of Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars with me from California when we moved to Brentwood, TN, after my father died.  The story - and I don't think it's apocryphal - is that when we moved into our house on Brenthaven Drive in 1972, my next door neighbor (who became my best friend) came home from school and saw me sitting in the floor of his den, playing with my cars, while our moms talked.  He joined me and a friendship that lasted throughout my youth was born.

That's one of the first things that made me really feel like a father - buying Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars for J.P. and playing with them with him.  Full circle, you know.

Now, off to begin an incredibly busy and likely stressful week at work.