There are more than a dozen of toy cars at home.  Different kinds and varieties. They vary from trucks to die-cast super cars, to cement mixers and what nots. Yet if the kids choose to fight over a toy car, they choose to fight over a damn Disney truck called Mater. No, not other toy cars. It has to be this damn Mater. All.the.Time.

Prior to Squirt being obsessed with cars and wheels, Spud has never, once, showed any interest in cars.  And one day, just like that, she started to play with all of her brother’s cars, picked a few of his favourites and refusing to return them to him. Not that I minded her playing with cars at all. It’s great! But it’s also annoying, as  since then, whenever Squirt gets a car, we have to get one for Spud, too.

I guess it was probably my fault for buying any at all during one of my afternoon day-market splurges. And I bought two of them, each with different colours thinking that if I get the kids to agree between themselves who gets what (which they did!), they won’t fight. I thought it was the most civilized way of doing things so they won’t be bickering. They proved me wrong.

So, this particular mater has been the bane of many fights and unhappiness between the two critters. It is one which Spud has claimed ownership to from the onset but after a few hours, Squirt decided that he liked his sister’s better. And so, for many days thereafter, he spent every hour, every day after that to annoy the hell out of his sister by taking the Mater away from her whenever he can. Oh! The screaming of one damn stupid Mater could bring! Who would have thought.

But, after all that Mater fracas, the fighting stopped. The Mater, we realized was gone and no one talked about it. We searched high and low and for weeks on end and we couldn’t find it. We shrugged it off. After all, those tiny cars disappeared all the time.

Until one night. I was just about tucking Spud to bed and as I fluffed up her pillow, I felt like my hand hit something small, but hard. Guess what I found when I clawed into the pillow case? It was nothing but the damn Mater which has been missing for weeks! Spud grinned sheepishly as I fished it out. When I asked her why it was there, she giggled and told me that she wanted to hide it from her brother so he wouldn’t take it away from her. Smart!

So. For several weeks, Mater was kept in her pillowcase, and Spud, somehow made up her mind that she was not going to tell a soul about it. Pretty darn sneaky for a then 4-year old, I’d say!

I only remember this story when I came upon some old photos on my desktop. These days, I have no idea where that Mater is.  Probably buried somewhere or likely has fallen apart, with some bits and pieces being sucked into the vacuum cleaner. Mater has lost it’s importance and they’ve now got other things to fight about. There’s always something to fight about. What’s the fun without fights, eh!