A Super Story – Just For You!

I’m on vacation this week and I’m replaying a few of my favorite blogs. This one was from just after Christmas last year. Enjoy.

We put up a lot of Christmas trees and Christmas decorations, so the whole house gets rearranged for a while. Then, after the trees come down and the boxes get stored, and the furniture goes back, and the cleaners get a chance to harvest any stray needles, we commence to putting the littler objects back where they went.

As best as we can remember, anyway. Obviously it’s not super critical where a particular vase was placed.

So things have slowly been finding their way back to their homes. Walk into the pantry and spy a framed print? Hang it on a wall somewhere!

In the midst of this process, we put out a picture frame that has about 12 grainy pictures from a scuba diving trip Michele and I took. The picture are of poor quality because we used a disposable camera that we bought about ten minutes before the trip. Even though the water was perfectly clear most of the week while we were diving, the cheap camera took pictures that were mostly out of focus in the relatively low light under the water.

My daughter had never paid attention these before. Now that she’s tall enough to look at them on top of the buffet, she realized it was not just a decoration.

“Who are these people?”

I smiled. “That’s Mommy and Daddy. We are underwater, scuba diving. Like on your Octonauts cartoon. See our diving masks?”

She nodded, impressed. She should be. There are some cool pictures in that group. We sat down at the kitchen table to look over the images. Although the ocean waters were warm, Michele and I donned wetsuits and dived to 100’, swam with sharks and sea turtles, hitched a ride of the back of a dolphin (okay, that last one was a paid attraction at a sea park, but still). Savvy, a dolphin lover of first order, was duly impressed.

I placed the pictures back onto the buffet. “One day when you’re a little bigger, you’ll get to go do that, too. Won’t that be fun?”

Savvy nodded. “Did you have to wear special stuff?” – a reference to our respirators, tanks and wetsuits.

“Sure. Do you want to see them?”

She enthusiastically nodded. “Yes!”

So I went over to the hallway. We sold the tanks a few years ago, finding it was easier to just rent them whenever we dived, and the masks and other equipment was… somewhere. But our wetsuits hang right in the downstairs closet. I moved a few coats, and pulled them out.

Since we don’t live in California, our wetsuits are not solid black. Mine is blue on the arms, with a blue V over the chest and a few diagonal stripes on the calves. Mommy’s is pink and black with stripes.

I pulled the first one out and held it up. They look big when they aren’t on a person, even bigger when you’re only 43” tall.

Savvy’s eyes grew wide in amazement. Without much of a point of reference, wetsuits are not what they looked like to her. She does not watch cartoons with wetsuited people in them. Even having just looked at the grainy old diving pictures, that is not what she saw.

And after studying them for a few minutes our daughter reached a much more likely conclusion. Like in The Incredibles, a cartoon we’ve watched at least a hundred times…

Those are super suits.

And her parents are secretly…

Superheroes.

One day when you’re a little bigger, you’ll get to go do that, too. Won’t that be fun?

 

I think I gained a whole new level of respect from our daughter.

Can you keep a secret? I can.

Want me to critique the first chapter of your story? SEND IT. Hit the Contact Me button and, you know, contact me. I’ll see what I can do.

FOLLOW ME! I’m this funny all the time. Don’t miss another valuable bauble that falls from my fingertips. You read this far; you need this stuff. SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW TODAY (click the follow “Follow” button, above) and if you send me your email through the Contact Me button I’ll send you a free copy of my amazingly cute book “The Short Years” plus we’ll probably become friends and start hanging out and stuff.

If you benefit from this blog, share it with your friends!

Dan Alatorre is the author of several bestsellers and the hilarious upcoming novel “Poggibonsi” – yeah, we know. We’re trying to convince him to change that title – check out his other works here http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Alatorre/e/B00EUX7HEU/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1425128559&sr=1-1 and check back often for interesting stuff.