Joshua 5.5

My sweet little Josh is already 5 1/2. I can't believe it! He LOVES superheroes. Every weekend he insists on dressing up like Batman, or some sort of Batman hybrid (Batman Buzz, Batman Thor, Batman Superman, or Batman Wolverine or even a tri-fecta of these characters). He wears this get up all day long. He wears it to go to the store, to pizza night, to clean the house, EVERYWHERE. When we go out to stores he gets all sorts of comments. It is amazing how many little kids say things like, "Look Mom! Spiderman!"....uh....apparently your child is not as nuts about superheroes as mine. Josh loves it though, he spends the whole time jumping and leaping as he does karate moves down the aisles. I have to try to keep the kill-shot shrieks to a minimum but there is no shortage of growls and "hi-ya"s. He sees all the other shoppers as potential targets/threats/possible allies. Sometimes an adult will play along, "Holy cow! There's Batman!" (to which he beams) or they may pretend to fight him for a minute. Some old ladies pretend to be afraid...or they really are...it is hard to tell. Interestingly, I have not had one person tell me to "keep him in line" or anything even close to that. This is weird because when he is not dressed up and makes similar types of noises, old people try to calm him down. Old people. They are so strange. If Josh gets in trouble at a store he has to sit in the cart. This makes him furious and he will scream his anger to the world. Old people just can't take it, and they have two distinct ways of showing this. The "stern way": they approach my son and scold him for me, "You can't yell like that in a store!" "You are hurting my ears!" "Stop that yelling". Or the "nice way": "Hello there little boy!" "Why are you so upset?" or they make a silly face or pull a funny trick or offer him candy. His reaction? Screaming directly into their faces and possibly clenching his fists with a crazy "can't you see I'm about to throw some punches" face. Now I am sure you see my dilemma. Yes I am out in public, yes screaming is not really an acceptable public act, but my child cannot verbalize how he feels any other way. Besides, I can only get out to the store about once a week so there is almost no way I am abandoning my quest. So I let him scream. After he has gotten it out, I can redirect him...usually. But I have to stick to my guns. If he misbehaves, he goes in the cart, sorry old people, I know this thoroughly maddens you. I know you are old and have raised 5 billion kids but you haven't raised my kid. But back to the original topic. He will spend the ride home shooting his toy gun or swinging his toy sword/Thor hammer at fellow travelers and screaming. I have had to convince him to leave the weapons in the car because if he is that crazy without them...well, you can imagine the mayhem. Come to think of it, he gets in less trouble when he is wearing his costumes in the store because people find his craziness cute, that and when he starts to get too far away I have him come back to "protect me" which he loves. Of course this brings on a new round of shadow boxing with the people closest to me. I don't know how long people will find this cute (a year? Two?) I don't really care. He can go to the store as a superhero for as long as he wants.