Soupman to the Rescue
My two-year-old was injured on the playground at his preschool yesterday. Through all the tears (and there have been a lot of them in the past 48 hours), we’ve also laughed a bit, too. When I first arrived at the school, he was screaming and holding his arm. He wouldn’t let anyone touch it. He wouldn’t even let me give it a get-well kiss. I asked if he’d let anyone kiss his boo-boo and he immediately replied, Superman. (Actually, he said, “Soupman,” which made me envision a man in tights with a Campbell’s soup logo emblazoned across his chest.)
Later, between sobs in the car, he said, “Soupman fix it.”
Not knowing how to locate the Man of Steel, I took him to the pediatrician’s office instead. Then to the hospital for X-rays. Then back to the doctor. He finally stopped holding out for Superman, and let me kiss his boo-boo. In fact, he demands it, every few minutes, in guttural Exorcist-like tones, “Kiss it! ki-i-i-i-i-i-ss it!!” (My husband, taking note of how I unhesitatingly respond to my son’s commands, is probably off giving himself some self-inflicted wounds right now.)
Ironically, the radiology staff at the hospital gave him a Superman sticker after torturing him with their demonic X-ray devices. On the way home, stopped at a red light, I looked in the rearview mirror. He was holding the sticker up in front of his injured arm, talking in a deep superhero-style voice, “Go away, owee!” By the time I pulled into the driveway, he was fast asleep in his car seat, the first he’d dozed in more than 24 hours. Maybe the Man of Steel came through, after all.
I wonder if he takes Blue Shield.
