I looked up at the top of the slide and standing there,
his hands on his hips, a bright red cape tied around his neck, was my
2-year-old grandson.
"Who are you?" I called to him as I walked up.
“Superman," he said, sliding down the slide and jumping
up at the bottom, just like the Man of Steel does when he lands.
James flung his cape behind him and took off, on his way
to foil a villain. As he ran across the playground, he kept looking behind him,
making sure his cape was flapping in the wind. Every once in a while, he’d stop
and pretend to karate chop the bad guys.
That scene took me back 25 years to when his father ran
around with a cape pretending to be Batman or Superman, depending on his mood
for the day. I could also picture my youngest brother who did the same when he
was a preschooler, terrorizing all the mailboxes up and down our street with
his super-human strength.
Children love to pretend they have magical super powers,
and when mom ties a cape around their shoulders, they transform into someone
with incredible powers to rule the universe.
Or at least the family dog or a much younger brother or
sister.
Started Early
In our family, the love affair with super heroes started
when we were kids. My dad would often stop at the local 7-11 on his way home
and pick up comics for all of us. I was an "Archie" comic lover while
my brothers preferred "Silver Surfer" or "The Flash."
At night, we’d pass around the comics and my brothers
grudgingly read "Baby Louie" while I came to love their superhero
comic books. I didn't care for the war comic books as they were too gruesome,
but I loved the Marvel and DC heroes, especially Wonder Woman with her
invisible plane.
When the insecure teenager Peter Parker first appeared as
Spiderman, I was hooked. I couldn’t identify with either Batman or Superman as
they seemed invincible, even though Batman was still a human and Superman could
be foiled by a chunk of green kryptonite.
But Peter Parker was a superhero with acne, no money and
no friends. He couldn't get a girlfriend, everybody hated Spiderman and Parker
got pushed around all the time. I couldn’t get enough of those comics and, to
this day, I’ll choose Spidey over Superman.
When my boys were growing up, they too loved Spiderman
until the X-Men came along. They had every action figure from the series –
Gambit, Wolverine, Sabretooth and Beast – and they had constant wars with
Batman and Superman.
They also loved dressing up like their favorite
superheroes, so we had a variety of capes – a red one they could wear to
pretend to be Superman, a black one so they could be Batman and some generic
capes they could wear just to be wearing a cape.
They wore those capes everywhere we went. We were like
the Justice League in the grocery store when they’d march down the produce
aisle, their capes providing them with super-human power against the broccoli
and eggplant.
Watching my grandson run around the playground, his
imagination providing him with bad guys to fight and foes to overcome, I felt as
if I’d stepped back in time. I was so happy he’d inherited his father’s love of
playing superhero and glad I was there to watch him protect the world.
After all, isn’t that what all superheroes are supposed
to do?
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