Superhero

It has been the year of the Superhero in our house. First, there was the obsession with Superman (somehow in alignment with the movie we never saw...) and now there is a true love affair with Spidey. "Did you know his real name is Peter Parker, Mom?", my now 4 year old asks incredulously. He absorbs these new facts about the webslinging superhero like he's learning his times tables. He throws them on me at the dinner table between handfuls of spaghetti and sauce that he's trying desperately to swirl on his fork. "Um, did you know, that Spiderman was on a field trip, and he was bit by a poisonous spider, but he didn't die, he got web-power, and his feet are sticky and he can climb walls, but he doesn't have x-ray vision, and he doesn't wear a cape because he doesn't fly because spiders don't fly, they just web." He says all this in one breath with a mouthful of spaghetti. But it doesn't really matter than no one can understand him because we've heard it all before,daily,hourly...possibly even more frequently. I now know about even obscure superheros who joined the Justice League apparently after I'd stopped watching WonderWoman cartoons. Jonn Jonze, the martian superpower, Green Lantern, Hawk girl, Flash, to name a few.
But the best is when he creates his own superhero persona, like when he's wearing his rainbow striped shirt and he tells me he's "Colorful Man." (Fighting for truth, justice, and gay marriage?) I guess that's the beauty of the Superhero phase is that children get to believe for a few brief moments or a couple of years, that the good guys are out there fighting evil, and that they are also fighting evil in the backyard with a hose and sandbox shovel. My daughter never went through this phase or it's Disney Princess equivalent of it (thank God, I must say), but I am loving the sense of adventure, and the complete personality and identity shift that occurs when he puts on those spiderman pajamas.