Our four-year knows how to work a computer.

Of course, he doesn’t know how to spell or type yet…so when he needs to look up something, he yells for me to type it in.

I guess I’m the monkey’s stick.

The monkey knows how to use tools.  I supose that I’m a tool.

Lately, what he’s been obsessing over has been some toys that McDonalds included in their HappyMeals over the years.

“mcdonalds transformer toys” are the keywords that open up the vault of videos on YouTube.

When you type that in for your child, you get about a million videos of adult men talking about the merits of these various giveaway toys.

Of course, all you see are the toys and the grown men’s hands…so it’s not as creepy as it sounds…but it’s still kind of creepy for these dudes to be so obsessed over these little figures.

Oh, well.

Anyway, Nate’s obsessed, too.

He watches these videos like there is going to be an exam at the end.

The funny thing about it is that he doesn’t understand that these are videos about toys that have already had their day in the sun. These are toys that aren’t available anymore. These are toys that are really hard to find.

These are toys that you can’t just go to McDonalds and get in one of their overpriced, under nutritious HappyMeals.

Of course, what really screws us up is that he’s been able to find some of them in thrift stores so he’s pretty sure that they’re still available if we just look hard enough.

There’s no divide between thrift stores and Walmart, either.  I think he thinks that thrift stores are just an oddly merchandised and marketed version of the regular discount stores.

That lack of discernment in a four-year old will mess you up…he really doesn’t get why we are so free with our purchases when the toy costs a quarter instead of thirty dollars.

It’s easier to find things at Walmart…the toy aisle is a big tease, the expensive robots at little boy’s eye level, enticing with “press me” come ons and the light up siren song.

It’s easier to find things…so the cry of “I FOUND IT!! LOOK….THE (SO AND SO OR WHATEVER)…I FOUND IT!!!” is too common.

There’s not a whole lot of difference between inexpensive or expensive in his eyes.

My son is no Ben Bernanke.  He doesn’t understand money yet.

But he really understands Transformer toys.

He has a strong handle on understanding the history of Transformer toys….but somewhere in there, he kind of got confused about history.  I think that time gets kind of compressed when it comes to the availability of all the toys in the known world.

So Nate will sit clicking the mouse…watching these videos about some cool transformer toy from 2003…visions of sugar plums and Optimus Prime swirling around in his head.

And I’m his tool…ready to come in and type something else that lets him go deeper into the Transformer HappyMeal rabbit hole.  I’m his facilitator.

Come on, Lucky Seven!!!  Baby needs a new BumbleBee convertible robot Transformer HappyMeal toy!!!