Wednesday, October 03, 2007

When superpowers fail

Walking home yesterday, I saw a little boy and his mother headed toward me from the other end of the block. He was quite small, maybe four years old. He also happened to be a super hero--as evidenced by the rather dashing red cape he was wearing with his street clothes. He was running a little ahead of his mother. Clearly there were superhero-type tasks to which he needed to attend with considerable urgency.

His mother caught up to him and, to my surprise, pulled his pants down at once. She guided the wriggling boy toward the curb, took his tiny penis between her thumb and forefinger and directed his stream of urine toward a tree. Apparently bladder control was not one of his superpowers.

Fortunately, I don't think there were any arch villians in the vicinity at the time, because that kind of thing can be damned embarrassing.