Toy Story is a pretty great movie in that, no matter what your child is like, they’re probably going to relate to either Woody (the funny, very nice, kinda quiet good guy) or with Buzz Lightyear (the loud, arrogant, strong, proud, no nonsense good guy). It’s almost a window into your child’s inner core as you watch them pretend to be one or the other.. you can see which they would like to be.
I’ve only recently introduced Cameron to these movies, since part 3 is coming out this month (there was always newer better movies coming out so I just never got around to them) and he loved them, as I knew he would… but what I didn’t know was who he’d pick to want to be.
Cameron, being very skinny, very tall and funny and quiet…. picked Buzz Lightyear! And for his friend Woody, he picked his little brother Tyler, the shorter, stockier, louder one. To look at them and to even know them, they were mismatched. Chances are, no one would expect Cameron to pick Buzz Lightyear.
What it boils down to is his simple wish to be able to fly and shoot laser beams. Not overly enlightening or heart felt as I would like to be conveying to you in an effort to get more readers but there you have it. After that first day of watching the movie, he was not overly eager to go to school because he wanted to watch it again but when I told him his rocket ship was coming, instead of his bus, he climbed right on.
A little while later I talked to him about it and asked him if he knew what infinity meant. Of course, he said no and so I described it as “as far as far can go… if you went to outer space and kept going, it would be the furthest you could go”. At which point, he got all excited and said that he could go that far and proceeded to run around the house.
It likely didn’t mean much to him beyond just being silly but to me it kind of meant something more… that he really could go “as far as far can go” if he wanted to. That if he really wanted to, he could fly. That if wanted to he could…. oh jeeze, I hope he never gets a laser beam.
Anyway, the end result is that watching him want to go as far as far can go and then go further… helped me to feel pretty good about his choice to want to be Buzz Lightyear.
Maybe it’s just me wanting to find the tear drop symbolism and all that mushy good stuff. I’m quite happy with him shooting for the stars rather than wanting to be a rootin tootin cowboy now that I look at it the way I do.
To Infinity and beyond!
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