Reality check

It was sleepover weekend for the boy. He left the house Friday afternoon shortly after exiting his school bus and he returned around dinner Saturday. He came bounding out of his grandparent's car with a pillow-case safety pinned around his neck and a brightly colored "TA" emblazoned upon one side of it.

"And you are?" I said, curious about the identify of what was clearly the world's newest super hero.

He had named himself. His own imagination picking over potential word combinations until he could settle upon the one he thought the world was most sorely in need of.

"I am . . ." he bellowed, pausing slightly for the appropriate amount of dramatic impact, "Think Before You Act Boy!"

Ah..ok. Yes.

He leapt up the front steps like they were small stones upon his path and practically flew into the backyard where his father and sister waited to greet him. The grandparents and I followed him. We watched him leap up on the children's plastic picnic table - setting his feet apart just so and his arms held out before him about shoulder level.

"Logan, don't stand on the table. Get down," said Daddy, weary already of what he knew has been an ongoing battle.

Logan, in all his five-year old-I-can-call-the-shots-myself glory, simply reset his feet into a new stance and smiled.

"Logan, down. Now," said Dad as he tacked on the coming consequence for the refusal to listen.

I walked over, quietly, lifted the superhero from his perch, holding him out horizontal to the ground and flew him to safety. I flipped over the small table and placed it in my dying vegetable garden.

"Clearly," I whispered to him as he glared at me, "Think-Before-You-Act-Boy has run into some kryptonite."