A Boy and his Trains

Liam loves trains. He is obsessed with them actually. His daddy loves to build track configurations for Liam, even though "Liam-zilla" usually makes an appearance to (accidentally) destroy portions of the new track set-up. But we love it. Just in the last year, we have amassed quite a collection of track and engines, as you can see from these pictures. 

Like anything, Liam's interest in his train table waxes and wanes--we are currently in the midst of a particularly obsessive period during which all he wants to do is play trains. We can tell his imagination just keeps getting more expansive and more vivid. He puts twelve trains together at once and attempts to lead them around and through the various parts of the track. Almost unbelievably, he knows the names of all his trains without hesitation--we even have to read the name sometimes to remember ourselves! And we know, in a year or so, Gavin will also love to play with all these trains. He has also quickly learned the magnetic attraction between trains, turning trains around to get the magnetism right. (Physicist!)

His trains also bring out the eloquence in Liam. Our favorites: "The train chugging along on the track." "I need to go upstairs and play trains." "Should I play trains with [wif] you?" "Oh, excuse me, Daddy." (When he is circling the table and needs to get by.) "Cool track, Daddy." "I got fix track." "Choo choo choo choo. All aboard!"

It's impossible, of course, to convey the funny inflections in his voice as he says these: the pauses, the high voice, the cute mispronunciations. "Skar-WO-ey." (For Skarloey, one of his current favorites.)

So now allow me to wax poetic (again). What did children do before trains? Trains have only been around for less than two hundred years, and their period of dominance was, in historical perspective, quite brief. Yet children absolutely love them. What did children in the 1600s and 1700s do? (One answer, of course, is that life was short so there wasn't really "childhood" in the sense we know it today--young people went to work on the family farm or in the family craft shop.)

And is there something about trains (and trucks) that innately appeals to children's brains? Or something wired into our brains that is attracted to them? Is this an example of one level of evolution and its recursive relationship with technology and economic progress?