Before having a child parents tend toward a Utopian vision of what family life will be. Then your child (or children) arrive and the truth of military philosopher Moltke the Elder's axiom hits home-no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
One upon a time the boss had a homebrew earthquake preparedness plan.
The building we're in dates to the late 1800's and until a few years ago its attractive period masonry was gloriously un-reinforced. Being buried in the rubble by a quake was a legitimate concern.
His plan was thus:
When the quake hit, we were supposed to high-tail it for the back door. The main room is the bottom floor of three, suitable for pancaking any number of clerks. The rear of the store is a much later addition, a single story cinderblock structure.
It made a cursory kind of sense, until we had a serious quake. The building that collapsed in Paso was structurally identical to ours. The windows rattled, I thought "is that a truck going by?" and then I had the counter in a deathgrip while the floor tried to buck me off.
That's the fantasy of family versus the reality- the annihilation of quaintly naive ideas by irresistible forces of nature.
He's going to get excited about what he gets excited about, and it's fortunate for both of us that I mostly leave him to it.
This is a roundabout way of explaining his love of Spider Man has nothing to do with his old man's history of comic book collecting or the custom spray painted Spider Man that adorned the bottom of his youthful boogie board. He came by it naturally, with perhaps a bit of a wind assist from Netflix & Roku.
And as with all things Fuss, just any Spider Man won't do.
He loves perfectly ripe, in season fruit, but he won't touch it otherwise. He doesn't like hot dog buns, but he loves this one particular expensive, organic brand from the local heath food store.
So, this morning.
He was up early- my introduction to the day was a gentle tap on the forehead presaging the declaration "dada LOOK, the SUN is coming up!" I happily acceded to his request for 'a show', buying time to make coffee and breakfast without interruption.
"Want Spider Man!"
"Okay."
There are a number of animated iterations on Netflix, lately he's been watching this awful one from the early 80's. Sample plot: Doctor Doom swoops down on Air Force One in a giant blimp, kidnaps & brainwashes the president as part of his plot to have the United Nations elect him RULER OF EARTH. Also, Spidey swinging from the Statue of Liberty to the UN building...guh!
So I'm in the kitchen, and fuss starts complaining.
"No, dada, want SPIDER MAN!"
By now I've figured out that when you give him what he wants and he's still complaining you're missing some kind of nuance.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"Want the YELLOW ONE."
Unsure what the 'yellow one' is, I back out to the menu and do a search for 'spider man', hoping Roku's menu icons will bail me out. And they do!
"Want that one, dada, THAT ONE! The YELLOW one!"
Yep, the awful one from when I was a kid.
But you know what? He's right.
It sucks, but it sucks in a more genuine way- watching it, you get the feeling the people involved were doing their best. Sample plot: the Rhino steals a bunch of gold bars from an armored car because he wants to make a solid gold statue of himself- Spidey takes exception. Stupid, but better & more honest than that claptrap with Doctor Doom, which doesn't make sense even using comic book logic.
And it does have one of the GOAT teevee theme songs:
That IN COLOR bit at the beginning taunted me as a child.
I wonder what Fuss would make of a black & white television, assuming we could even find one?
No comments:
Post a Comment