When I was a kid, my little brother idolized He-Man. We would shout, “By the power of Graaaaay Skull!” And ride around on pretend Battle Cats and fight Skeletor. On more than one occasion I would do something to make him cry. By accident, of course. And whenever that would happen, in order to avoid getting in trouble, I would give him my best pep talk: “C’mon Geoff, He-Man doesn’t cry.” And he would suck up his tears and my sins went undetected as he did his best to emulate the body-building, blond-bobbed bravery of his favorite super hero.
I used to feel guilty about using gender stereo-typed tactics to avoid getting in trouble, but now I just like to think of it as my early years of influencing without authority…
So, somewhere in the first few months of kindergarten, Jacob started his own “Superhero Tim.” That’s pronounced Team in Spanish. He immediately began recruiting members and assigning secret identities.
WARNING: Nobody is to mention that they know anything about this Superhero team or who is on it. I have purposefully left out most personal identifiers. I mistakenly brought it up at a birthday party as a way of making small talk with the parents of one of the little girls who was fortunate enough to be “chosen.” Jake was so upset that I’d blown their cover that he cried and I could barely get him to forgive me, even with cupcakes and a bounce house at my disposal.
Here’s the breakdown:
Superhero Identity: Thunderbird
Position: Omnipotent Captain and Leader
Powers: Controls fire
Weapons/Special Possessions: Swords with indestructible ends, fire mega-mega blaster that shoots fire bullets that put enemies to sleep, car, jet and motorcycle with four wheels
Superhero Identity: Cheetah Boy
Position: Trusty Sidekick
Powers: Super fast; can run forever (unlike normal cheetahs)
Weapons/Special Possessions: Jet, car with booby traps, a motorcycle with robot feet instead of wheels, guns with speeding, sleep-bullets
Superhero Identity: Super Nature
Position: Team Mom… I mean Member
Powers: Queen of nature; can control nature
Weapons/Special Possessions: Hover board, mega-mega blaster, force field; nature is her weapon
Superhero Identity: Armor Cat
Position: Thunderbird’s Father
Powers: Indestructible body
Weapons/Special Possessions: Hover board, mega-mega blaster, shield, invisible dagger
Other members of the team include:
Water Girl (girl from the bounce house birthday party)
Black Jaguar Boy (aka best friend from school who was a Peregrine falcon for Halloween)
Rock Girl (Black Jaguar Boy’s Mom)
Crystal Girl (long-time female best friend)
Music Girl (was Little Red Riding Hood in this year’s play at school)
The omnipotent, dictatorial captain and leader spends much of his time, of late, creating lists of who is on the team and who is off. If you don’t do what the leader says or give him what he wants, he uses his powers to threaten and/or remove you from the team. Sometimes he crosses your name off the list, or puts you on the “Bad Giz (Guys) List,” or underlines all his favorites and strikes your name or erases it. All of this power is unfortunately over-effective with Cheetah Boy, who will melt into a puddle of powerless spandex if he is taken off the list.
I’ve been coaching Cheetah Boy not to let Thunderbird control him with these mind games. Pssst, Cheetah Boy… how ’bout we start our own super hero team? I bet we could get He-Man!… you know, he never cries…
There is an illustrated Super Hero Tim book around here somewhere. In the meantime, a couple snapshots of the latest lists:
God Giz Tim (Good Guys Team)/Bad Giz Tim (Bad Guys Team)
Lest (List); I had to add Nate back and double-underline him in order to get him in the car on Sunday… apparently Super Nature’s powers are ineffective on Cheetah Boy.
