Toddler Filling Toy Car With ‘Gas’ From Garden Hose Goes Viral

Perhaps in response to North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s plea to avoid panic buying gas, 2-year-old Channing Monroe really got inventive. The toddler was filmed filling his toy car with “gas” from a garden hose, and don’t interrupt him because he’s taking his job very seriously.

North Carolina has been struggling with a gas shortage ever since the east coast’s largest fuel supplier Colonial Pipeline was hacked earlier this week. Southeastern states like North Carolina have been hit hardest, with Gas Buddy reporting approximately 70% of gas stations sitting without fuel. Folks really panicked. So much so that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission had to issue a Twitter thread that said: “Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline... We know this sounds simple, but when people get desperate they stop thinking clearly. They take risks that can have deadly consequences. If you know someone who is thinking about bringing a container not meant for fuel to get gas, please let them know it's dangerous.”

Fortunately for little Channing, his car runs on his little feet and some good old water from the hose. His mom, Morgan Monroe, who is a nurse at Duke Raleigh, took a video of her little boy filling up his cozy coupe with a garden hose. Dad Brandon told local news outlet WRAL that his precocious little boy had washed his toy car before but he had never seen him pretend to fill it with gas.

It seems Channing has been paying pretty close attention to what his parents have been doing, because he insisted on gassing up his toy car after watching his mom do the same thing that morning. "I have to be at work, so we went, got dressed, got [to the gas station] before dropping him off at daycare," she told WRAL. "I was like, 'oh my goodness, this is crazy!'"

Channing’s adorable video has been a bright spot to thousands of people in an otherwise difficult time for the people of North Carolina as they scramble to find gas to go to work and school, and his parents were happy to share it. "I thought it would be really funny in the midst of this gas shortage crisis," his parents told WXII12. "We thought it would be funny to send that picture in – just to add a little humor to a stressful situation for all of us."

Now if only everyone’s cars ran on water like Channing’s, wouldn’t that make life so much easier? Maybe that’s what Channing is ultimately trying to tell us with his video.