A Boy and His Blog

Posts Tagged ‘R2-D2’

Posted by Daddy:

Owen has been especially fond of robots lately.  I’m not sure how this started, though I think it was a combination of a pop-up book of robots I began reading to him about 6 months ago, coupled with a theatrical viewing of WALL·E.  He also likes trucks, balls and books, too, but he’s really into robots – to the point that he has begun pretending to be certain robots.  This is significant, because Owen almost always deals in reality.  If he’s crawling around on the floor, and I say: “Are you a kitty?” he’ll answer, “No, I’m an Owen.”

His favorite robot, I’m pretty sure, is WALL·E.  He’s only seen the movie once, but he’s never forgotten about him, and he talks about WALL·E daily.  A few weeks ago, Entertainment Weekly dedicated a page to each of their favorite stars from 2008.  WALL·E, of course, received a page, and Jennifer tore that page out and taped it on Owen’s closet door.  But it turned out that Owen was more interested in the little snippets on the bottom of that page, where Entertainment Weekly briefly mentioned five other cinematic robots they were especially fond of.  Owen repeatedly asked me who each one was and how they walked.  (I think Owen is the only three-year old who knows that the robot in the film Metropolis was named Maria.)  He’s also asked to see footage of these robots, so I’ve had to scour the web looking for stuff to watch.

Yesterday, Owen’s robot pretending peaked.  He insisted that he was R2-D2 and I was Gunter.  He asked me how R2-D2 ‘walks’, and I stuck out my chest and hung my arms behind my back in the best R2 simulation I could come up with, and Owen decided to walk around the house like that all day.  I had to walk around like Gunter (from Lost in Space), then Gort (from The Day the Earth Stood Still), then the T-800 (from The Terminator).

We took a trip to the State Capitol yesterday, and, as the three of us were being escorted around the building on a guided tour, Owen continued to pretend he was R2-D2.  I think people kept looking at him thinking “What’s wrong with that poor kid?  His back must be in terrible shape!”  Even as we ascended and descended the grandiose marble staircases, Owen continued his pretending.  Of course, since it’s quite hazardous to walk bent over backwards on marble stairs, he asked me to hold one of his hands, and for Jennifer to hold his other hand.  This allowed him to bend back even more.

All evening, he referred to me as Gort, repeatedly requesting that I walk like a robot.  At night, I told him it was time to go to sleep, and he countered with: “Robots don’t get tired.”  I told him that robots do, however, need to recharge their batteries.