batman strikes

 i love henry so dearly.  this boy seriously has more spunk, drive, ambition, creativity, & compassion crammed into a teeny 4.5-yr old body than anyone i know.  and when he decides he likes something... he gets serious about it.  there is no halfway with henry.  he's all or nothing.

one of henry's latest likes is batman.  over the past 6 months or so he has had tons of fun entering the batman world.  he loves doing the bad guy/batman thing with his toys.  and he loves to watch the shows when he can.  i'm thinking i should have seen this coming...but seriously, when do i ever see any of henry's scenarios coming?  i'm not sure it's possible.

i went to pick him up from school a couple weeks ago & the teacher wants to have a quick chat.  be aware that we often have to have these chats...henry's had an interesting first year of adjusting to 4k school life. 


(i take a deep breath)  okay-- what's up? 

on the playground today, henry threw a kid in the recycling bin.

(suddenly choking)  what??? 


they were playing batman....


the kind teacher goes on to explain a scenario that involved one of the sweetest boys from henry's class.  i later interviewed henry & his story went like this....

mom, i was batman.  and jacob was the bad guy.

did jacob want to be the bad guy?

um, no.  i just told him he was the bad guy.


(quick lecture on letting kids choose what they want to do in play.)  go on...


so as batman, i picked up jacob & threw him in the recycling bin.  


let's stop for a sec.  i know you're all imagining this, right?

nope, go up a size.  batman is too smart to place a bad guy in a bin he can easily escape from.  let's go on with our story.

but then i realized jacob was stuck & couldn't get out.

let me just interrupt one last time.  now we're onto imagining this size bin, right?  wrong again!

so i thought i could help save him. i thought i could grab onto jacob's hand, wyatt would grab my hand, and another friend would hold his hand.... 

you were going to do a human chain?  

yup.  but when i hopped in there to grab onto jacob's hand, the idea didn't work.  we both were stuck in there until the teacher came to get us out.

was jacob okay?

yes, he was just scared in there until i came in.  we got really dirty, that's all.

case went later and nabbed a pic of the real recycling bin where this event occurred.  i'm still not sure how in the world henry pulled this off.  case was kind enough to be the one to contact the boys' parents & make henry do the live apology.  i felt i had already gone through enough after talking through the deal with the teacher and henry...and would share the fun with my hubs.  the teacher said that a snow pile near it made it only half as tall...but i'm still struggling with the mental image of a preschooler picking up another preschooler and putting him in an enormous dumpster!

a few lessons learned that day:

1. we do not repeat things that cartoons do.  and many things that cartoons do can't even be done in real life.

2. we do not force friends to do things they do not want to do.  be it being the "bad guy" or be it getting thrown into a dumpster.  and here's the one that still bugs me a bit...

3. there is a very real possibility that i might not have a little batman on my hands...but rather a living, breathing superman.  how henry could pick that kid up & throw him in a thing that size is beyond me.  when the x-ray vision kicks in, i'll know for sure.