blame it on the DNA

Do you not know that a magnetic attraction pulls a boy towards anything with wheels? (An appropriate simile would be "like a moth drawn to the light.") He spots them in a pile of toys. He glues himself to the window when the garbage truck comes by. He dreams of driving a train. Thomas the Tank is his BFF. Almost every parent of a boy eventually declares his son to be the most avid of wheel lovers. 

One day not long after his birth, we stand and watch in disbelief as he utters his first vroom vroom. Dad turns to us and says, "I never taught him that! Did he hear it from someone? He must have heard it somewhere?!"  I am certain there is an undiscovered gene marker for "making vehicle noises" hidden deep in their DNA code. (There is also probably another gene marker for "making guns and using all manner of gun noises" wouldn't you agree mothers?) Because if you are a mother of a boy you swear that his boyness is eerily innate.  It is just a simple truth, a boy is just plain tickled by anything that has wheels. Don't even try to understand it.

This little guy is just the sweetest. The crazy thing? We share a sliver of the same DNA. Not that I am a lover of wheels, but we are blood related. His mother and I are third cousins, but grew up like sisters. She has known me the longest of any of my friends and our mothers played as girls. It was an odd feeling to watch him tinker on the ground with his new set of wheels and know that, even if we do not share the same wheel obsession, we are connected by blood and ancestry.

And then to see my 10 year old bend down and join him in taking those wheels for a spin gave me a chuckle. No matter that my son is 8 years the elder, he too is still drawn to the set of wheels, like a moth to the light. For a brief moment, these two vroom vroomed together in quiet acknowledgment of their shared DNA.

Yep. They're related.