A Hero is BORN!

(Last chance to not read this)

It’s no fun when your child is sick. If it’s the typical childhood (or adult) illnesses like colds or the flu, there is typically very little you can do for them. Keep them warm and give them the various over-the-counter nostrums that attempt to alleviate the symptoms they are having. Lend a kind ear to their complaints. Spend time with them hoping against hope that you don’t also come down with whatever disease they are trying to fight off (this never works by the way) as they cough, sneeze, and hack in your general direction, while also reassuring them that you don’t find them at all disgusting with various contaminated fluids leaking from every pore and orifice of their bodies.

OK, that’s the set-up.

My son Guy Jr. came down with a pretty virulent cold or flu starting last Friday. Fortunately both of my sons had Friday and Today (Monday) off with Teacher’s work days (what our local school system calls unused snow days to even up the calendar) so he didn’t miss any school. At one point he had a fever of almost 103 and we had to give him a cool bath to bring down his temperature. His pediatrician was less than helpful by giving us the sage advice to keep him quiet, drink plenty of fluids, and give him Motrin to keep the fever down. DARN! There goes my plan to hire him out to be a Stuntman while off from school.

One thing we have discovered though during this bout of ‘I don’t feel wells’ is that Guy has a previously unknown Mutant/Super ability. The first time it manifested itself, we didn’t realize that this was not just a freak occurrence. The second time it was obvious that we were dealing with a previously unknown mutant power and that we were going to have to change our lives.

What is this gift? This super-human talent that marks Guy as being different from his peers? It is the uncanny ability to only vomit when in the vicinity of expensive and difficult to clean Persian (or Persianish) carpets. I had purchased quite a few of these while traveling through the Middle East and until my wife and I had moved into our new (at the time) home, most had been rolled up and stored. In hindsight, maybe they should have stayed that way.

The first time was after he ate an entire bag of BBQ potato chips and a carbonated soft drink just before bedtime. This combination waited until slightly before 2AM before manifesting spectacularly all over the 6′ X 4′ rug in his bedroom. The second time was last weekend. He had been sitting eating some soup and complaining that his head hurt. After taking his temperature (right around 101 at the time), I asked him to take some Motrin. He said his throat hurt and he wanted a lozenge to sooth his throat first. I said that drinking the water to take the pills would also sooth his throat and would mean he wouldn’t have to wait until the lozenge was gone first. This upset him and his sense of theater kicked in as well at this point with him getting louder and louder (me too in frustration) and he moved from the kitchen with its hard-tiled floors to the dining room with its (yes, you guessed it) own 4′ X 6′ Persianish carpet. As soon as his feet hit the carpet, he did the Technicolor yawn.

In an effort to not explode, my wife and I joked about this being his mutant power. He kept apologizing and I had to remind him that I wasn’t angry (well, I was a little) and that his mother and I were laughing about it and that he should probably just take that for what it’s worth.

It has been difficult to come up with suitable superhero names as all the good ones seem to be taken. Here’s the ones we’ve come up with so far:

Vometo
Carpetous
Technoheave
Gagmitous
The Yackster

Don’t tell Marvel or DC Comics until I have the time to register and trademark those names. In the meantime remember what Stan Lee once said:

With mediocre power come poorly defined areas of responsibility’¦