"Awesome" and "What's stock?"

Four and a half years. I have been waiting for my son to have a conversation with me for four and a half years. In my more depressing moments, I used to daydream about what we'd discuss and all the things he'd tell me. I promised him I would always be here to listen to him or to help him understand anything he was struggling with. I wished and hoped that he'd one day say things of his own accord, but some days progress is slow. And other days, it just pure awesome progress that makes you want to laugh and cry with happiness.

Today is one of the good days.

The past couple of days have been fun in getting some spontaneous speech from Joel. Rob and I have been talking about going to see the new Star Trek movie and I wanted him to watch the first movie with me again so I could make sure I understand the characters and everything (I am really easily confused lately, and have never seen an episode of Star Trek in the first place. So basically, consider me a blank slate.) Anyway, we were at about the middle of the movie and Joel came downstairs. Although he shouldn't have been out of bed, he had a huge grin on his face when he saw a movie playing. He watched for a bit, then snuggled right up to Rob, stared at Captain Kirk and said "Awesome!". It was one of the cutest things I'd ever seen.

And today! Well, today was the day. We were watching "Mater's Tall Tales" and got to Joel's favorite cartoon, featuring Tokyo-Mater and a drift race? (Yeah, I don't know what it's called. Grift race? Shift race? Lift race?) There's a part where they are outlining all the rules for the race and one of the rules is that the losing car will be stripped of all it's modifications and become stock. (Here's a clip of the cartoon in case I am not explaining this well..... after seeing it so many times I just gloss over it now.) They make being a stock car sound like the most awful thing in the world, which I suppose is fair if you are a Tokyo racing car. 

       Joel turned to me and asked, clear as day, "What's stock?" The first thing going through my head was "Seriously, kid? We've waited nearly five years to have a real conversation and you're wasting precious time asking me about cars?"  I fumbled a bit. "Well, uh, it's when a fancy car gets all of it's shiny accessories taken away, all the paint and extra pieces and becomes a boring car." I hoped that would answer his question, and I felt so nervous, like I didn't know what to say or how deep of an explanation he was really looking for. But that seemed to suffice.

So, in the words of my Joel, today was "Awesome!"