It's a bird....no, wait...

There was a time when my daughter Robyn thought my husband was Superman. Literally. She was sure he could fly and the whole nine yards. Come to think of it, she thought she could fly, too. (Perhaps she assumed it was hereditary.) As proof, she would beg me to watch, then run from one end of the living room to the other, leap into the air and come crashing down about eighteen inches away. “See?” she would demand, “I told you I could fly!”

To be fair, my husband did more than a few things to perpetuate the myth and thus remain her #1 hero for as long as she was willing to believe it. When we’d hear her coming down the hall, he would take a leap, landing just as her little brown eyes would come around the corner. “Oh honey,” he’d say, regret weighing heavy on every word, “You just missed it. I was flying all around the house.”

“Oh, Daddy, do it again. Please!”

He’d begin to huff and puff. “I’m sorry, sweetie, I’m just too tired.”
And though she’d be disappointed to have missed his flight...again...she’d nod her head, brown little ringlets bobbing in sympathy. “Okay, maybe later.”
Now, add to this my daughter’s hero worship of Deputy Sheriffs in general and my Deputy Sheriff husband in particular, and you’ll understand why she thought him capable of heroic acts at any time of the day or night. She firmly believed that he could and would help anyone in distress at any time. It’s not too far from the truth () and it led to an interesting discussion between my daughter and I one afternoon.

Our little family was driving down Avenue R when we spotted three women broken down on the side of the road. Dan, good man that he is, abruptly pulled over and offered his help which they gratefully received. While he was outside with his head under their hood, Robyn bombarded me with questions about what he was doing and why. I told her that Daddy was helping them because he was a good man. She argued (as she will invariably do when the opportunity presents itself) that he was helping them because he was a Sheriff. I tried correcting her, trying in vain to instill in her the idea that he was helping them at that moment simply because he was a Good Man! And she was just as insistent that it had nothing to do with that, but with the fact that he was a Sheriff and that is what Sheriff’s do!

Finally, after several rounds and no decision in sight, she finally sat back with a satisfied smile and said, “Oh, I know! He’s a Sheriff at work and a Superhero at home.” I wasn’t about to argue with that logic. It sounded about right to me.