A Little Superhero Redemption

My jailers redeemed themselves yesterday . . . sort of.

We are in Day Nine of the poverty — paychecks have come in but not cleared, so the money is tantalizing me from the “pending” section of the bank account all weekend.  Nevertheless, groceries we need, and groceries we shall have, and the credit card shall be charged, and Lo we shall pay it off on Monday when the gold fills our treasure chest, and all shall be well.  So I took the boys to the walmarts.

The thing about the walmarts is that it has food and also all the various bits and bobs that Jack suddenly needs to stock his classroom with.*  Errand-running minimized to one place.  I hope desperately that I don’t end up on the People of the walmarts website, a large pregnant lady with her hair caught up in a loose ponytail, frazzled bits framing her face like a halo, wearing very unflattering capris and a loose t shirt that billows around her large belly like a sail, hollering futilely at two boys who love to run off in different directions and careen heart-stoppingly close to very tall, precariously-arranged stacks of items on display.  After several minutes of hollering I finally put them in the cart for a long while, though lifting 50+ pound Jack in and out of there basically ruined my back for the rest of the day.  We got a few toiletry items (Tinkerbell bandaids and Tinkerbell toothpaste – were you even aware how many crappy Tinkerbell movies are on Netflix?  Suddenly the boys are really into Tinkerbell and fairies.)  I bought other bandaids and soap and things for Jack’s class, and then we headed over into the dollar bin to get some treasures for his classroom behavior bribery box.  On our way there, we passed the Halloween costumes.

I love Halloween.  My family takes it to a kind of serious level – by “my family” I mean my parents and siblings.  My husband, and in fact all of the SOs, find our enthusiasm for Halloween a bit bewildering.  In any case, I always make the boys’ costumes and I usually like it when they are something scary or at least funny.  But this year they are desperate to be superheroes, have been for ages, and so I caved and let them pick out a Spiderman suit (for Jack, of course) and a Batman suit.  They wore the masks for the rest of our grocery shopping trip.

If you were curious about my title, we are finally getting to the redemption part.

As I needed the groceries to go in the cart at this point, I hauled the boys out of it and committed to a full sprint through the aisles so as to minimize their capacity for damage.  Nearby a tiny toddler boy was being pushed around in a cart by his grandma.  And he thought Jack was really Spiderman.

So Jack played the role.

He leapt from the aisle to the floor, did a pushup, then leapt to “stick” to the freezer chest thing.  Then he stood and strutted wordlessly over to the boy, who was gazing wide-eyed, and showed off his Spiderman muscles.  The boy’s grandma was oohing and aahing for the toddler’s benefit.  Jack didn’t say a word, just did a few theatrical web-flinging moves and then struck a pose as the toddler was rolled out of sight, still gaping at him.  Once the kid was around the corner, Jack broke character and told me, in the most impossibly adult voice, coming to me muffled through the fabric of his mask: “That little boy thought I was really Spiderman.”  He chuckled, in a “Kids These Days” way.  I swallowed my heart.

Liam, meanwhile, was having a hard time keeping the Batman mask situated on his face in a way that allowed him to actually see out the eyeholes, but he wore it nevertheless, caroming from aisle display to freezer chest and back again, running into things and people and falling over and hopping back up and running some more, saying “Fwow fwow fwow” (because Batman throws bats at people like ninja stars.  He has always believed this for some reason.)  Plenty of folks probably thought I was a horrible mother who can’t keep control of her children, but most of the more sympathetic crowd just clutched their hearts and said Oh my lands, it’s Batman!  And Liam would Fwow some bats at them, and they would play along, and meanwhile I’m hauling peanut butter and cold cuts off the shelves at the speed of light and trying to replace all of the knocked-over display items that litter the ground in his wake.

Later, Jack performed his wordless strutting role again, this time for a kid of about 8, who, with a sweetness that broke my heart anew, pretended that he also thought Jack was really Spiderman and acted all agog.  And suddenly I loved all of the little boys in the entire world, every one of them, and wanted to have twenty seven more and gather them all up in my arms and say Don’t ever stop being this awesome, there are only a tiny handful of adults who are as awesome as every one of you are being right now and I just want to hang out with you guys all day.

We made it out alive, although Liam nearly caused a workers’ comp injury when he spun the grocery bag spinner thing and almost caught the checkout lady’s arm in it.  I took them to Chick fil a to play in the playground, and while I was in line they escaped out of the little glass-walled playroom and ran shoeless through the crowded restaurant and knocked over someone’s drink and wouldn’t mind me, and I got annoyed with them all over again.  But, you know.  So it goes.

*There was once a time when public school was free.  That time, we are learning, is no longer.  I am not exaggerating when I say we get 2-3 fundraisers and/or requests for money per week.  Two to Three.  Zwei oder Drei.  That’s a lot of cookie dough, popcorn, and wrapping paper they want me to sell.  Not to mention we are expected to provide most of the school supplies and even, and I’m serious, half the clerical work.  Parents are expected to volunteer to come in one day and make photocopies, staple things, etc.  And these are not the actual classroom parent-volunteers, who are the SAHMs who take one for the team and volunteer often to help the teacher out, in the time-honored tradition, and for which I am very thankful because they do the volunteer work in the community that I cannot – this is expected of the parents with jobs.  They want us to take a nonexistent vacation day, a precious day out of our tiny pile, and use it to come in to make photocopies.  I’m tempted to just take mine into work and give it to our runners to copy for me.  I’m also, by the way, just writing a check to the PTA and skipping all of these fundraisers because seriously.