Nico's New Found Respect for Mommy

So, as I anticipated, the time has come when Nico would get into Acceleracers, much like his brother before him.

For the uninitiated, Hot Wheels' Acceleracers was a failed marketing campaign series of 4 one-hour cartoon episodes (originally aired on Cartoon Network) that coincided with a launch of a 36 die-cast collectible cars, other car-related toys and playsets, an interactive website, a collectible card game, not to mention the pajamas, backpacks, soundtrack, and other sundry items.

The answer to the obvious question here is yes, we own about 90% of the available Acceleracers gear.

Anyway, Nico and Thurman have been watching the episodes (on DVD) recently, and Nico has been predictably raptured by the exciting car races, crashes, and other action. However, another interesting thing has happened as well. Nico now thinks his mom is a race car driver.

One of the characters in the show is named Karma.

Karma's car:

And the die-cast version Nico plays with:

I don't pretend to know exactly what goes on in that little brain of his, but I do know that for a few days, he believed that the character in the cartoon was his mommy. While watching the DVD, he'd say stuff like "Mommy! There's your car!", or "Mommy! You said 'Maniacs'!", or "Mommy, you crashed!" When he plays with his cars, he often has to show us "replays"- and whenever Karma's car was involved he'd say, "Mommy! Your car crashed this other car!" or the like.

I don't think Carma was amused as much as I was about this.

On one hand, I'm slightly jealous. I kind of want my kids to think I'm the good driver (a thing I'm sure Carma would disagree with). But it was also fun and interesting to see an extra amount of reverence displayed towards Carma as well. And secretly, thinking that my wife may have been an extra-dimensional race car driver is kind of...exhilerating.

Cue Mazda "Zoom, Zoom, Zoom" music.