Why I hate Superman

In the spirit of posts about coconuts on deserted islands, I bring you: Superman is a bastard. (Subtitle: Work is slow the day before July 4.)

No, really. The guy saves lives and is generally a do-gooder, sure. But (regardless of what you'll hear elsewhere) laziness is the root of all evil, and this is one selfish, lazy superhero.

There's a scene in Superman Returns in which he soars above the clouds, gets a good satellite's-eye-view of the Earth, closes his eyes, and listens for trouble. He immediately finds it, so he zips back down, fixes some stuff, foils a robbery, rescues people in distress, and so on. It's terrific stuff, and everything that makes Superman Superman is embodied in this sequence. The invincible hero using his strength to better humanity, incredible acts of heroism and charity, etc. And yet, when he puts on the suit and does his thing, that's when I realized I hate Superman.

Because WHY DOESN'T HE DO THIS ALL THE TIME? He just spent 9 hours chatting it up with old colleagues and getting settled back into his old job as some hapless newspaper reporter. That's all perfectly natural, I thought, until he started in with the heroics and it occurred to me to wonder, how many people just bit it because you wanted to knock around the old office for the day instead of putting your talents to good use?

And it's not just that he's dividing his time: HEROISM IS HIS NIGHT JOB. It's his hobby. It's what he does when he gets off work. Heading into a fatal traffic accident during business hours? TOO BAD, CHUMP. I'm busy trying to win dates while acting like a tool because it's the only thing left that challenges me. Sure, I could save you, but where does it end? Nah, I'm gonna pretend to be a loser half the time and see where that gets me.

That ... makes no sense. If you want to be loved, just be yourself, and they'll love you, believe me. Also, there'd be more people alive, you selfish bastard.

And what's up with reporting? Hey, I love journalism, and I understand the allure. But really, you could be contributing more, earning more, and further along the path to self-actualization, and you wouldn't have to pretend to be a limp fool anymore in the process, which surely you must find tremendously disheartening after awhile. There is something seriously wrong with this guy's psychology.

He's doing something no one else can do. This is a hugely rare and valuable service he's providing -- it's unique, in fact -- and certainly the governments of the world could put their resources together and compensate him fairly for it. Why is this not his full-time job? He's a massive violation of the principle of specialization. And another thing: you know how many people wish they could report for a paper like the Daily Planet? Stop stealing our jobs!

Clearly, from his portrayal, there is little to limit Superman's ability to locate and prevent disasters. And if the entire planet can be within scope, there will never be a shortage of work for him. But he wastes enormous opportunities to do good by piddling around with playacting for unconscionable stretches of time.

And don't even get me started on why he's decided an individual bank robbery is worth stopping when he could be fixing Africa.

Jerk.

I have failed to live up to my father's example, and let's face it: was the bar really that high?

An overdue story:

A couple weeks ago we drove up to Rochester for the Conners family's pregnancy-related revelation party. So now we know they're having a girl (and congratulations to them). But to make the trip reasonable to inflict on our two young boys, we had to arrange to stay overnight. Two four-hour trips in one day would have been way too much for any of us to handle.

So with the Conners' permission, we drove up Saturday, stayed the night, and drove back Sunday. Great party, and really great to see friends again. I don't know how often I'll get back to Minnesota now that we've moved, so I tried to make the most of it.

I could tell dozens of little stories from that trip. One of my personal favorite moments was revealing to Casey that it was time for bed. Steve wanted to administer bedtime, but as soon as he picked up Casey, the poor boy burst into tears. So I carried him upstairs instead, where Erika and I spent a few minutes trying to calm him down. He was SO distraught, and no reassurances were getting through until one of us mentioned that everyone was going to sleep, not just him, and we'd all have breakfast in the morning, and wouldn't that be fun? Suddenly he calmed down, and it dawned on me ... the last time Casey spent the night, we left him for days while we hunted for a place to live in Madison. He wasn't upset about bedtime, he was upset because he thought we were leaving him. Once we told him that mommy and daddy were staying too, he had no more problems. I was kicking myself for not thinking of that sooner.

But I had not yet begun to kick myself, because the next day, after a typically amazing breakfast and a thorough inspection of the house to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything, we hit the road, bound for Madison again. Twenty-five minutes into the trip, the phone rang. As soon as I saw it was Steve calling, I knew ... we forgot something. Grr. But then Steve revealed what it was: Casey's blue "100" blanket, so named because it has the number 100 stitched in a corner. And that's when the horror hit me.

Casey LOVES this blanket. It's more a constant of bedtime for him than Moonbeam Bear, and we've had many, many nights when the absence of the 100 blanket is an emergency preventing all sleep. Hell, you have to ORIENT the blanket properly so the corner with the 100 on it is located in arm's reach. Spin the blanket around so the 100 patch is at his feet, and you're just going to have to go back in there five minutes later because Casey can't find the 100 in the dark. Sleep is the household's biggest problem, and most of our family conversation centers on who's slept when, how much sleep they got, and how it is never, never enough. And the blanket that Casey absolutely needs for a peaceful bedtime is back in Rochester. Damn it.

Now before I go further, let me tell you another story from my own childhood. My dad used to play a lot of softball, and sometimes that took us to weekend tournaments at parks a long drive from our house. And my sister and I would go along, play on the playground until it was time to go home, and then we'd drive back. But on one trip, Susan burst into tears after driving home for an hour, because she'd "lost Bernie," a stuffed dog she'd left on the playground somewhere. And it is now family legend how my heroic father turned the car around, drove us alllllll the way back, plucked the dog off the swing where it had apparently been rocking untouched in the breeze for several hours, and then drove us home again. He added two hours or so to an already long drive just to retrieve this lost stuffed animal that my sister had to have.

And so when we'd forgotten Casey's blanket, it was a little different, because he wasn't yet upset, but we knew he WOULD be. But I didn't think twice about it. I set the car's GPS to take us back to Rochester so I could get the blanket.

"Really?" Erika asked. I sighed. I didn't tell her about the story with the dog and the park and my father. I just told her I thought we ought to go back, but -- with the GPS reporting a 30-minute drive back to Steve's -- it would add an hour to our already long trip. It's tough transporting a 2-year-old and a 7-month-old in the car that long, and nobody was thrilled at the idea of adding an hour, so with Erika expressing some reservations ... I called Steve back and told him we weren't coming, and he should drop the blanket in the mail.

And then I spent the next four hours fighting off the guilt while I drove. Somewhere inside me, a voice kept whispering, "A GOOD father would have gone back."

We got home, and it got to be bedtime, and Erika sat Casey down on the bed and said she had something important to tell him. You could tell Casey sensed this was a serious matter, because he quieted right down and held still and studied his mom carefully to figure out what was going on. And so Erika explained that we'd left the 100 blanket behind at Steve's, and we'd have to have it sent in the mail, and we'd get it in a few days. Casey, in the sweetest voice he's got: "OK, Mommy." But we weren't sure he really got it. And sure enough, Erika started to get up, told Casey it was time for bed, good night, etc. "100 blanket!" Casey yelled. Erika explained again, we don't have the 100 blanket, it's at Steve's house. And that's when Casey started to cry.

Oh, the guilt.

A few days later the blanket arrived in the mail, and Casey was so delighted he wouldn't let it go, just clasped it around his neck and ran around wearing it like a cape for an hour. So it's got a happy ending, I guess, but still. I missed the chance to live up to my father's example, and now I'll have to live with it.

The sounds of naptime

Naptime has been going on for about 90 minutes now, and from the bedroom I can hear long, mournful harmonica notes. I wonder what he's trying to tell me.

Overheard

"Casey, are you hungry?  Are you ready for lunch?"

"No, I'm not hungry!"

"OK, well let me know when you're ready for some chicken nuggets."

"I want some chicken nuggets!"

No one puts one over on my boy

Mommy took the family out to dinner last night -- haven't been to the Olive Garden in at least a year, and we just wanted to get out.  Casey skipped his nap and apparently spent the afternoon giggling.  I'm not sure what he thought was so funny, but after the first 20 minutes I'd been home, I started to think that maybe it was the oxygen deprivation.  That stuff's hilarious.  So yeah, let's take the Joker here to a restaurant, great idea.

As it turned out, he was well behaved once we were there.  Except for the moment when he decided to try his crayons on a soup bowl instead of his paper placemat, I didn't feel any discipline was required, and that's a smashing success for a restaurant outing these days.

But we weren't pushing our luck either, so we weren't about to linger once his considerable appetite for breadsticks ran out.  We asked the waitress to box up our food to go.  Casey was back to coloring happily when she started removing plates, and as soon as she lifted mommy's ravioli from the table, Casey stopped coloring, whipped his head up, and shouted, "Hey, give that back!"

Where'd THAT come from?

Anyway, lessons on politeness can come later.  Today I'm proud he's standing up for himself, protecting his family's food, and speaking in surprisingly well-formed sentences while he does it.  Gold star, Casey.

Neurosis revealed!

Steve pointed out that I've been more open about my neuroses lately.  Can't explain that, but I can substantiate it.

Here's my nightmare scenario:  I'm stranded on a tropical island, and the only abundant source of food is coconuts.  Starve to death or subsist on coconuts?  I just don't know.

How hungry would I have to be to eat coconut?  If I reached that point, would I still hate the coconut?  Or could I actually achieve such a level of hunger and delirium that I could mitigate the awfulness of coconut?  As I ate and satisfied hunger, would I then reach a point at which my coconut hatred would return, and I would be unable to eat further?  I mean, then my life becomes a balancing act where I manage two levels of acute suffering, only eating enough coconut to reach that point again where coconut aversion exceeds my desperation.  See what I mean?  Maybe it's better just to starve to death.

And if it's pickles, I will never be hungry enough.  Never.

Darn it, Casey

This morning I prepared for work as usual and was about to leave the house -- all I needed was my ID badge, which I'd left on the nightstand over the weekend.  But it was gone.

Probably fell on the floor, I thought, so I scoured the area around the bed.  But I still couldn't find it.  I turned some lights on -- the ability to get into the office is kind of important, so I wasn't about to leave without the badge.  I didn't want to disturb Erika, who needs all the sleep the kids let her get, but I had to find that badge.  She's a light sleeper and already knew what was going on and asked if I was looking for the badge.  She said she hadn't seen it in the laundry or anything, to which I told her everything I already knew:  it wouldn't be in the laundry, because I left it on this table, and I know that for certain, and I know you wouldn't move it, and I know I didn't move it, and that means that a child has moved it, and that means that it could be anywhere.

When I hadn't turned it up myself within another minute, she got up to help me look.  I started checking the floor and the toy bins in the living room and was starting to think about whether Casey might have dropped it down the laundry chute when Erika called from the bedroom:  "I got it!"  She emerged, handed me the badge, and smiled at me.  "You have to think like a child," she explained.  "It was in the CD player."