Ryan’s Story

[MarineHawk]

I’ve always loved the Hummer concept since I first drove a HMMWV in 1990. When my almost 2-yr old son, Ryan, was about 10 months old, I bought him a 6”-long Military Hummer toy. He loved it more than his other toys for some reason. He got more Hummer toys soon. His 7th word at about 1 yr was "Hummer" – following only mama, dada, nana, “bubba” (Buddy the dog), and a couple others (of course, Hummer is an easy word to enunciate). He became downright obsessed with Hummers. What I find interesting is that he used the term dozens of times per day, yet rarely ever used the term incorrectly. A few times, he called Jeeps “Hummers,” but by about age 15 months, he started calling them “little Hummers.” Soon thereafter, he dropped the habit altogether and learned the word “Jeep.” Since then, he points them out somewhat indifferently, but never calls them “Hummer” any more, reserving the term for the real thing. When he was 16 months old, my mother in law was driving to Costco and took Ryan to the Moore Cadillac Hummer dealership, where I recently bought mine, and let him look around. It was raining. So, she just let him look out of the window at all of the H2s and H3s. A salesman came up to her window and asked if he could help her. She said “no, I’m just showing my grandson some Hummers since he really loves them.” Shedding his usual shyness in front of strangers, Ryan started chanting “Hummer! Hummer! Hummer! …” as he pointed at several of them. The salesman was startled by such emphatic brand-name recognition from such a tiny toddler who obviously had a very limited vocabulary. He thought it was so cool that he told my mother in law to wait, went in the dealership, and brought out a Yellow Hummer H2 toy for him to keep. He slept with it for weeks. For a long time, he has often wanted to sit in my lap and watch Hummer videos on the "puter" in the office (we watched this one a hundred times: [url=http://www.lynchhummer.com/videos/lynch.fullline.mov]. More recently, we’ve watched the Moab and other Hummer videos on the "puter," and then Ryan tries to duplicate the rock climbing with his toys.
When I brought my H2 home from the dealer on Thursday night, he had been prepared for it by my wife and M-I-L, and he went gaga. After about an hour of driving him around and letting him pretend drive, it was way past his bedtime. He threw the saddest and most pathetic fit he's thrown in months after we, as diplomatically as possible, ripped him out of the driver’s seat and closed the truck door. After we took him inside, he kept trying to open the front door, desperately crying "Dada, Hummer; Dada, Hummer." To get him to calm down, we had to tell him about 50 times that it would be there tomorrow, and the day after, etc, we would drive around all weekend, and that it would be his one day. My wife said that his 1st words the next morning were “dada, black Hummer; dada, black Hummer.” My family has really been amused by our favorite young toddler’s obsession. Of course, now he thinks I’m Emperor of the World. No small benefit of Hummer ownership.