Tights Don't Help You Fly

 My earliest memory is riding in a car with my grandmother, probably somewhere in the Rio Grande Valley since that’s where my grandparents lived when I was little, and since my memory of this event includes being surrounded on all sides by farm land. My mom might have been there too, and maybe one or more of my aunts. The whole picture is kind of fuzzy and has that washed out quality that we tend to associate with pictures from that era. Or maybe my brain just insists on seeing it that way since it was raised on TV and movies that like to use the same images over and over and over again. This scene is washed out and over-exposed. This is code for a flashback to the 60’s or 70’s. Are we all understood? Excellent.

While some of the details are vague, what I do remember with perfect clarity is that I was pissed off about the stupid Mickey Mouse overalls in which I was dressed. I had not chosen this outfit, and I did not like how its straps kept falling off of my shoulders, nor did I appreciate the fact that they had just stuffed me into these silly overalls without a shirt underneath, leaving my precious baby skin exposed to the cold metal clasps. On top of all that, I did not like how they kept telling me not to worry about it every time I complained.

How do you like that? My earliest conscious memory is fashion related.

This memory, however, is of no use to me at the moment, and I’m not even sure why I told you about it since it has all but no relation to the rest of this post. Because the memory I would really like to have on hand is the moment when I realized that superheroes were not real. Or better yet, I need to remember what it was like when I realized that simply donning the costume of a given superhero would not imbue me with their powers. Because I seem to recall a time when I walked this planet with that idea in my head, but I don’t remember when my experience informed me that this notion was incorrect, nor do I recall what it felt like to be that little kid marking what seemed like such a great idea off the List Of Stuff That Is True And Really Happens. I bet it sucked.

My wife and I recently tried out a little incentive program with our eldest son to see if we could make bedtime a little bit easier on all of us. Call it a bribe if you must, but it seems to have done the trick and the results seem to have stuck around. Basically, every night that he went to bed without issue, he got a stamp, and when he had enough stamps, he would get a surprise. And I mean something good, too, not just me and his mom jumping out of his closet in the middle of the night yelling SURPRISE! Over the course of about a month, during which there were nights with stamps and others without, we have watched our bedtime routine simplify to the point where little dude pretty much puts himself to bed and, joy of joys, stays there. His grand reward for all this, aside from evenings of quality sleep? The costume of his favorite super hero, Super Why. 

Now if you don’t know who Super Why is, that’s okay, you’re not missing out on all that much. He’s the leader of the Super Readers, a band of kid heroes each armed with their own language related power. Super Why, being the leader of the bunch, has the power to read, which is kind of lame seeing as how even I can do that. However, he also has a bit of skill in the flying department, and best of all, he and his crew are actually able to jump into books and muck about with what’s going on in them.

What book would you jump into if you could? I think it’d be fun to jump anywhere into the Harry Potter series and start yelling “Voldemort! Voldemort! Voldemort!”

Anyway, the costume. I guess since he knows what it's going to be it's not much of a surprise, eh? Little son has made it perfectly clear to his mom and I that when it arrives and he puts it on, he expects to instantly gain all of Super Why’s powers, much the same as if he were to chop his hero’s head off in some PBS version of Highlander. He will instantly know how to read. He will be able to jump into books. He will fly.

I sense that disappointment is imminent.

But that’s pretty much a universal law, isn’t it? That one’s right there at the top of the List Of Stuff That Is True And Really Happens. Disappointment is imminent. Things won’t always work out. You will get your heart broken. People you love will die. Some choices will be made for you by others and you will not like them. Your favorite band will put out a shitty album. Pain will happen.

It's not a big deal, but it makes me cringe just a bit, like watching an accident in slow motion. But every single person I know has learned most of these things and they’re all reasonably intact and functional. My boy may feel a slight sting of disappointment that he can’t fly into Wacky Wednesday to knock that shoe off the ceiling, to which I’ll simply respond with a kind pat on the back and a “sorry, kid,” and then suggest that we keep working on that reading power.