My Family: Justice League Rejects

TheRealMattDaddy.com

One of these things is not like the others... 

Don’t ask me how Batman got into The Justice League. That freakin’ guy doesn’t have any super powers. I guess if you have enough money you can buy your way into anything. (Am I right, Mitt?) But I’m not bitter about being excluded from the elite ranks of super hero society. My wife and I are perfectly happy using our sub-super super powers for public service. Most people don’t know that about super heroes. If you don’t make the big leagues, you get stuck working for local government (which makes a few heroes frazzled enough to become villains). But like any parents, we are hoping that our daughter will rise to the upper echelon of The Justice League once she develops her own super powers.

My wife, Mrs. Matt Daddy, has the super power of lie detection. She can spot a lie a mile away. You would think that this would be a useful skill for The Justice League, but apparently, lie detection doesn’t save children from burning buildings, stop locomotives from running over tied up ladies, or catch criminals. Instead, Mrs. Matt Daddy uses her power of lie detection to work with local law enforcement. But her favorite thing to do with her super power is to harass the people who work at Chick-Fil-A. She knows they have to say, “My pleasure” after they get thanked for something. When she knows they’re lying, she simply says, “Don’t lie. Jesus doesn’t like that,” and watches them turn red. I love that woman.

My own super power, being able to hear at a super human level, is both a gift and a curse. What does that mean, exactly? I can hear a mouse fart from a mile away and it sounds as adorable as Zoey Deschanel playing the ukulele. But I also hear a lot of things that I don’t want to hear – like my senior citizen neighbors getting frisky. My ability used to really freak me out as a kid. I had to learn how to filter out what was important to hear what was not. Once I learned to control my hearing, I was able to distinguish between sounds that demanded a response – like my daughter getting her leg stuck between the rails of her crib – and those that did not demand a response – like a horse dropping a turd in the middle of a field at night.

Because my ability is better suited for parenting an infant or toddler (lie detection will definitely come in handy later on), I stay home to care for our two year old daughter, Nugget. I hear the little cough she makes just before she wakes up every morning. I hear her tummy rumbling before she even knows she’s hungry. When I hear the soft sound liquid hitting a cotton diaper, I jump up and change her immediately, so she never gets diaper rash. During nap time, I know if she is getting close to rolling off of the bed because of the way the springs creak. Sure, I’d rather be fighting crime, but I’ll settle for being a super dad for now.

One of the responsibilities we have as super hero parents is to identify our daughter’s super power as early as possible. When we brought Nugget home from the hospital, we thought her power was going to be toxic flatulence. She would rip the most horrendous little squeakers that any baby has ever ripped. We envisioned her fighting side by side with Wonder Woman and the rest of The Justice League (bent over backwards, of course), but according to our other friends with kids, smelly farts were totally normal for infants. We were kind of relieved. It would have been difficult to come up with a cool super hero name for her with that ability.

When she got a little older, she would spit up her formula, in a projectile fashion, literally ten feet across the room. This was stuff that would make Gordon Ramsay proud. We thought if we could teach her to aim, this spit might be deadly. After all, Zeitgeist can’t even control his acidic vomit (he discovered this while puking on his girlfriend and burning her face off), and he gets to fight crime with the X-Men. To our disappointment, our doctor said she was just allergic to her formula. We really thought we had something there. A few months later, my wife got very excited when our little Nugget grabbed a spoon full of strained peas out of her hand and threw it across the room. Maybe our little girl would have super human strength. Wouldn’t that be something? Our non-hero friends confirmed that their kids did this too.

And so it continued. When she turned her body into Jell-o in order to slide out of her car seat, we thought she might be a shape-shifter like Martian Manhunter. We were wrong. When she spotted a fly on ceiling and followed it around for hours, we thought she may have super human vision. We were wrong. We were hoping she had invisibility when we didn't catch her putting a slice of provolone cheese into the DVD player, but it turns out that we just underestimated the sneakiness of toddlers.

I suppose this means that we’re not so different from first time parents of ordinary kids. We all think our kids are going to be super heroes. We’re just waiting to discover those talents in order to help develop them into something that will help society. We know that our child has a great chance of developing a super power since we both have them, but we also have to prepare ourselves for the remote possibility that our child will be completely normal and average with no super powers at all. If that ends up happening, then I need to go back to work so I can earn enough money for us to buy her way into The Justice League like that two-bit hack, Batman.

 

From the Judges

I love how you really tied the post up by bringing the beginning back at the end. It really made it feel 'whole'. I think this post was probably the one that was the best put-together this week. Mama Spaghetti was right on about the links too. You do a great job of slipping them in there. Another thing I want to commend you on is the way you listed examples of certain things. It can be a hard thing to list just enough, but not too many, and you did a great job!
-Tessa Taboo 

I think this post was good, but barely touched on the powers part. Trying to figure out the baby's power was great, but incorporating your and your wife's power into the story more would have sealed it for me. Bonus points for comic references.
 -SooperDad Blog of Awesome 

I've always wondered the same thing about Batman! Also, the way you work in your links ALWAYS makes me want to click them, which is a great blogging skill.

I liked your descriptions of your super powers, and I liked the guessing game of what the little one's powers will be. And I liked what you did tying in the "all parents are hoping their kids will be super" thing: It was something that resonated with me as a parent of a toddler. Nice job.
 -The Spaghetti Westerner

This was funny and clever, but I wasn't clear on how Batman fit in. I thought the baby superpowers were great. Nice job.
-Mommy in Law 

Nice overall effect (layout, links, images, paragraph length, etc.). This post also has a nice flow, and a bit of that "full-circle" aspect I'm looking for. You connected the intro with the closing, which provides a nice consistency.

You weren't the only one to call upon the obvious projectile vomiting as a power, but you couldn't have known that. You also demonstrated a little more depth than most of the other entries this week. Nice work.
 -From the Bungalow 

I like the different path you took with attempting to decipher what Nugget's powers would be. While I don't follow many Superheroes, I could get a good idea of who is who by your descriptions. I enjoy your sense of humor and I enjoyed this post. Good job.
-You Know It Happens At Your House Too (Guest Judge)