SuperWoman Says No

SuperWoman has a minor confession to make.

She has trouble saying “No!” to her kids.

It’s true. Despite her magic powers, she still suffers from this very human problem.

For some odd reason, SuperWoman wants her children to be happy. She unhappily ponders their future therapy appointments, in which they pout and complain that their mother was too busy defeating suburban monsters and writing about it on her blog to actually sit down and do puzzles, or draw pictures, or use the hose to fill up the tiny plastic pool in the backyard. She suspects they may point to their bellies and blame any extra fat on the overabundance of graham crackers they were allowed to consume.

SuperWoman is like most women, you see. She can never win in the universe of her own house.

So instead of always saying “No!” she tries to compromise. She makes attempts to barter and hopefully avoid the sounds of shrieking in public, the legendary battle weapon of toddlers.

It is no use. She still has to, on many occasions, utter that notorious word with the force of 10,000 mortals. And then she has to listen to these mortals freak out. It’s very unbecoming of them.

Lately, TalkMonster is obsessed with his supernatural origins. He begs to watch episodes of Superman and Spiderman and Batman and Voltron: Defender of the Universe to discover the divinities from which he came.

(Voltron was not SuperWoman’s idea. It was a predilection passed down to TalkMonster from his human father. SuperWoman prefers Word World, SuperWHY, and Special Agent Oso, for Hera’s sake.)

TalkMonster’s fascination started to get out of hand. Days went by, then weeks, and he was hungry for more stories whose violent implications he was too young to understand. Of course, SuperWoman was not eager to share so many of the mistakes and vicious conflicts of her forefathers. She prefers them to be shrouded in mystery, their sagas delivered only when children are old enough to recognize that hitting their sisters with swords is a bad idea. Still, TalkMonster begged for his distant cousins’ home videos of deadly laser beams, defeats of goblins, cars that metamorphose into monsters. Guns. (He did ask for Wonder Woman, too, but only, SuperWoman suspects, because he noticed her skimpy outfit. When will she put on a cardigan? SuperWoman shall write a letter.)

SuperWoman hemmed and hawed and wondered if this was the natural progression of a mother’s life from relative order into chaos. She was tired of fighting such emotional battles, so contrary to the ones she won in lace-up boots. Perhaps she had to accept that this was the way children of mortals spent their time—watching colorful pictures move rapidly on screens until their brains resembled the texture of cupcakes. She gave up, almost.

And then, one day, she had a realization.

Who was the friggin’ boss in this house?

SuperWoman.

She said, “Yes, you can watch a show this morning. It must be educational. Choose one: SuperWHY or Leap Frog.”

TalkMonster wailed and moaned and stomped his skinny feet. “Nooooo!” He whined.

“Pick one of these two options for now, Child. You may learn more about your superhero cousins, but only for a mere half hour, once you’ve consumed your dinner. If you do not accept this settlement, Beastly Young One, I will make you vanish.”

TalkMonster stomped some more and was commanded upward, to his cave. Faced with the choice of sitting in there for the rest of the day alone or watching SuperWHY, which featured his dorky fifth cousins twice-removed, he naturally chose PBS.

SuperWoman was glad.

From now on, her noble aims will not be thwarted by a 32-pound half-mortal.

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Tagged as: Batman, PBS, Spiderman, Superman, SuperWHY, SuperWoman, Voltron