Lightning McQueen haunts my dreams. I’m fast asleep and suddenly I’m on a race track, I’m a Cars character, and I’m spinning out during the final lap of the Piston Cup Championship. As I go round and round, a blond-headed blur whirls into view from my window, jumping up and down with excitement, yelling something in my direction. It’s my 3-year-old daughter, MJ – who, oddly, does not appear in cartoon form -- and it looks like she’s pulling hard for me to win, cheering me on to victory over that snide green car Chick and the old Dinoco-blue-clad champion, the King. My car, the red No. 95, comes to a stop in the middle of a straightaway, well before the checkered flag. As the other competitors zoom past, I see MJ again, but this time she’s moving closer toward me, running out to the track, still jumping up and down as she dodges all the other cars.

What’s she doing? I wonder. Doesn’t she know I lost? Why the excitement? And by the way, why did her father let her out here on this oil-slick track with all these other cars speeding around me? Note to self: Have a word with him later.

“Mommy! Mommy!” she yells, still jumping up and down as I sit in the driver’s seat and wait for my hug, for my “Atta girl, you’ll get ‘em next time!”

Instead, she says: “Mommy! Mommy! Can I have a Lightning McQueen bed? Pwease, pwease, pwease, pwease? Let’s go now and get one! MJ needs one. Need Lightning McQueen bed. Pwease.” Her hands are clasped in front of her in prayerful pleading. “Daddy said to ask you.”

I’m sure a psychoanalyst would tell me that it’s a manifestation of my worry over kids and commercialism, and that it’s coming out in my dreams because I don’t want to face my struggle with it during the day.

But for the record? Lightning McQueen haunts my waking hours, too. Cars has been playing in an infinite loop in our home since we returned from a family vacation that included my 7-year-old nephew, a fan of all things automotive, upon whom MJ believes the sun rises and sets. Because I’ve consumed the plot so many times already, I’ve started to analyze the animated features of McQueen – specifically his smirk – to see how well it matches Owen Wilson’s, the actor who voices the character. I’ve added new cars to the movie in my mind – an Explorer that would cruise around the fictional Radiator Springs, gobbling all the gas pumps whole; a Camry to portray the suburban mother who lets her child watch too much TV. That voice already lives inside my head, along with the one who shrugs her shoulders and says, “Pixar time for her means a few minutes of peace for me.”

Until I go shopping, that is. We went to Babies ‘R’ Us to pick up a few necessities, and I was hounded for the aforementioned toddler bed, plus a matching “sofa,” pop-up hamper and Cars toddler underwear … for boys, but when you’re still in diapers, you don’t know the difference. We left there for the grocery store, and there was McQueen again, smirking down on me from a tall shelf on a child’s lounge chair bearing his likeness. A Lightning McQueen lounge chair. At the grocery store. Above the cheese section.

“Mommy, can we have that?”
“No.”
“But I need –“
“No.”

Around the corner, between the noodle and cereal aisle – some of the finest toddler staples in existence – were two of those hanging displays you have to dodge to get a jar of cheap Ragu. Matchbox-type cars decorated the shelves like Christmas tree lights, but not just the Lightning McQueen car – the whole gang of cars from the movie. Collect them all! All 103 and counting! One hundred three.

“Oooh, Mommy! Can I – “

A thought went through my head about bribery, and how much I might be willing to pay to potty-train. I pulled the red No. 95 car off its little plastic fish hook, and as I did, I thought, how funny is that? How funny is it that the toy is on the fish hook, when it feels like I’m the one that has been reeled in?

MJ looked at me with surprise and excitement and expectation. This was different. This looked like it might be a “yes,” she seemed to be thinking.

“Look here,” I explained to her, not unlike Tow Mater might have begun the same sentence, “I’ll get you this guy here. And if you go on the potty and not in your diaper, I’ll get you another one. What do you think of that? Deal?”

She smiled and nodded her head. I handed her the package, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was still dangling on the fish hook … this time on a pole held by a 3-year-old. But, like the good people at Disney and Pixar, I’m not afraid of enticing children with cheap marketing ploys. They do it for the money; I do it for the opportunity to stop changing diapers. Either way, as I see it, we’re all taking the checkered flag.

Beth appears every Tuesday on TriangleMom2Mom. Read more about Beth at her blog MotherBunker.