How you too can turn your kids into Geeks: Superhero Edition

By Bethany Hiitola

Since conception my children had little hope of being normal.  I mean with a father with the designer gene, mom with the writerly gene, and a household that averages 2.5 computers per person—they  didn’t stand a chance. Examples?  My son was recognizing typefaces at about 3.5-years-old.  And now he draws self-portraits with pencil and computer art on a regular basis.  My daughter is quoting Wallace & Gromit and Coraline and she’s not even a handful of fingers old yet.  We couldn’t be more proud.

So how’d we do it?  It’s simple really, we fed him superhero pills every night before bed hoping his powers would show themselves before Kindergarten.  So far we’ve ruled out flying, laser beam eyesight, and anything that requires a lot of strength. We’re still hoping for some mind control/reading thing or some scientific geekery. But we’ll take the intelligence of Batman without such doom and gloom.

Yes, Superheroes are king in our house.  And sadly this year, my son gave up his secret identity wishes and told me that Superheroes “aren’t real.” I almost cried. I mean, Moms have magic. I know they do… alas how to tell him the lies of modern reality television!

But back to making the Superheroes king in the house—and thus the comic  and superhero worship and geek factor.  It started with figures, television (gasp!), and Ebay.  Yup, we started collecting all the favorite figures for the little dude as soon as he was 2.  Superman (his favorite), Aquaman (the original), Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman.   This meant scouring big box department stores for the latest versions with the matching cars and gear. Then we turned to Ebay for the original faces and figures (and 800 versions of Batman costumes).

The entire Justice League DVD collection lines the shelves of our movie collection—old, new, movies of all sorts, and even Superman from the 1960s we found at a Dollar Store on a trip up North. But that wasn’t enough, we needed the piece de la resistance:  the Superman T-Shirt. Sure we had at least 4 costumes (with and without muscles), and the obligatory Underroos underwear,  4 foot x 3 foot poster of Superman that lines my son’s walls, comic books deemed appropriate for a 2 year old (and others saved for when he is 16), but we needed THE Shirt.  And finding one with a cape was ideal. Because who is Superman without his cape? The shirt found us on a summer trip to Six Flags Great America. And then again this summer we had to find a replacement a few sizes bigger. The matching shirt for my husband. And a few more capes to line the closets. And… it was (and still is) awesome, and so in my son. My first Superkid—the predecessor of my one true Superman, my husband  (Sniff. sniff. I know. I’m such a sap).