Dustin Kruse, 4, of New Berlin loves everything about toilets. For Christmas, he asked for a Kohler dual-flush toilet, which the company gave to him. Credit: Kristyna Wentz-Graff

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Dustin Kruse turned 4 in September.

He has toy binoculars, a gumball machine, two toy workbenches, a set of six metric wrenches - real ones - a plastic pterodactyl that eats stuff and a little metal box where he keeps two tubes of Chapstick. He had three, but one melted.

His well-stuffed bookshelf includes "The Cat in the Hat," "Green Eggs and Ham," "Pooh's Grand Adventure," "Albert the Bear" and his current favorite, "Lemonade With a Twist."

He can use a tape measure to figure out how tall a Lego tower is, chalk a pool cue, read like a second- or third-grader, and form a grammatically correct sentence that includes the word " chiropractor."

He likes to ride his four-wheeler, build forts in the woods and stand on his upper bunk, stick a piece of gum on a blade of the ceiling fan and give it a spin.

And he loves toilets.

Two Kohler Co. posters hang on his bedroom wall. On his little desk are assorted Kohler brochures and a thick catalog featuring the firm's plumbing fixtures. And across the hall, in the bathroom, is the real prize. More on that in a bit.

Fixture mecca

Jim and Michele Kruse first noticed their son's admittedly unusual interest when he was about 18 months old and, having spotted a line of portable johns, wouldn't leave until he had inspected each one.

The parents, understandably, had reservations about this new enthusiasm. But they decided to go with the flow. They used portable toilets to help teach Dustin his colors. Michele encouraged his interest in reading by scouring libraries for books on toilets.

And for her and Jim, a bonus: Dustin potty-trained himself.

Sometimes, Michele said, she'll ask Dustin, "What is it about the toilet that you like? And he's like, 'Mom I just love it.' "

The depth of his affection became clear last June, when the Kruse family was returning to their New Berlin home after attending a Thomas the Tank Engine event at the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay.

Highway I-43 runs right past Kohler - the village and the company - so the Kruses planned a stop at the firm's multilevel showroom, the Kohler Design Center.

They were there three hours.

"They have a wall that has working toilets . . . and different rooms," Michele said, "so he'd be like 'Mom come in this room! Oh, this is beautiful!' "

Dustin was in porcelain paradise. Then he reached a new level: He saw the dual-flush toilet - smooth and sleek, with a two-button actuator releasing either a 1.6-gallon or 0.8-gallon flush to accommodate varying circumstances.

"He flushed it," Michele said, "and he's like, 'Mom wouldn't that be great if I could have this? Could you imagine all of the things I could do?'

"And then he's looking up in the air and he's thinking. He's like, 'I am asking Santa Claus for this.' "

Perfect present

A $380 toilet (without seat), however, wasn't going to make the Kruse Christmas shopping list. Michele decided to give the notion the silent treatment. Dustin took the opposite tack.

"He kept talking about the dual-flush toilet and how great that was," his mother said.

So she wrote the company a letter. Maybe they had a demo or something.

But the folks at Kohler, who have gone to great lengths to make the bathroom a retreat of luxury and style, know a thing or two about marketing.

There would be no demo for Dustin. For a little boy with so much love for a product that is a foundation of the company's multibillion-dollar enterprise, that would hardly do.

Last September, a Kohler semitrailer truck rolled slowly up to the Kruse home. On board were a "Persuade" dual-flush commode, a "Cachet" seat with a lid that gently closes itself and a Kohler plumber to install them.

"They wanted to make it a really great experience for him," Michele said.

Which it was. Dustin got to go in the back of the truck. And after happily exhausting himself over his new gift, Dustin fell asleep in the box it came in.

Still an interest

It would be easy to jump to a wrong conclusion about Dustin. Spend a couple of hours with him, though, and it's clear that he is simply a bright, precocious and engaging little boy.

He's not at all shy, and he enjoys just about everything that typical 4-year-olds like to do - play with friends, play make-believe, build snowmen, run around outside.

"He's just been very well-spoken from the time he was very young," said Mary Flagg, a youth librarian at the New Berlin Public Library who knows Dustin by name.

"Very, very inquisitive, very adult," she said.

It's not every preschooler, after all, who has his mom check out Chinese videos because he wants to learn the language.

Amy Vaughan Van Hecke, a Marquette University professor who specializes in developmental psychology, said that while an interest in toilets may be unusual, a childhood interest in mechanical things is not.

"Little boys often like to think about the mechanical world and how systems work. It's a very typical interest," she said.

That's certainly a good part of Dustin's enthusiasm. He peers in the tank and fools around with the dual-flush works. He takes apart the actuator and puts it back together like a little puzzle. The only thing surprising is the subject of his current fascination.

Jim and Michele Kruse seem to give both Dustin and his 22-month-old sister, Summer, ample opportunity to explore. And Dustin could have a how-does-it-work gene.

His dad is a former motocross racer with a big garage that's a little piece of gear-head heaven. Inside are a restored, butter-yellow 1940 Ford and '67 Plymouth Barracuda with the motor bored out to 472 cubic inches (it gets about 5 mpg), not to mention an engine hoist, sandblaster, bench grinder, welding equipment and a chest of Craftsman tools that stands a good foot higher than Dustin.

It's easy to imagine him covered in bearing grease in a few years. Besides, he's already backing away from toilets a bit.

"It's not like every time we're going in where he has to go in and see every stall," Michele said. " . . . It's still an interest but it's not an obsession."

What's next? For Kohler, it would be continued YouTube hits (102,000 so far) on the video the company made of Dustin enjoying yet another trip to the Design Center.

For Dustin, it could be anything. There's a whole world out there waiting.