How Do I Want to Raise This Child?

I’m not entirely sure what kicked the whole thing off, it’s a little muddled in my mind, but I think it started with children’s books. One of our friends bought little Jacob (who you may remember from “A Love Letter to Froggy”) a couple of early reader Superman books, one of which featured Batman. Now I don’t know if I’ve covered this before, but the Elson household is a Batman household. Don’t get me wrong, we have other favorites (for instance Jim loves himself some Constantine, and I’ve already mentioned a fondness for Zatanna), but when push comes to shove we unite under the banner of Batman. So you can imagine the joy I felt when little Jacob would innocently ask “Aunt” Rebecca to read him the book where “Batman saves Superman”. (I suspect the book was written with the intention of showing teamwork, but obviously that wasn’t what a child got from it.)

Well I proudly flaunted Jacob’s obvious Batman preference to the giver of the books, who as you might suspect, is a fan of Superman. Jim and I were pretty smug about it. Not to ruffle anyone’s petticoats, but for me it’s kind of like Superman only exists to be in the “Justice League Unlimited” episode “Destroyer”. (“I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard. Always taking care not to break something, to break someone. Never allowing myself to lose control, even for a moment, or someone could die. But you can take it, can’t you, big man?”) After a while the Superman fan decided to put a stop to this.

I can’t remember word for word what was said, but here was the general gist of the message; if I didn’t stop pitting Batman against Superman he would bring Spiderman into Jacob’s household and it would be all over because NO child can resist Spiderman. So I had to ask myself, in the end, how did I want this child to be raised? DC Universe or Marvel Universe?

And from that day forward, for every gift giving occasion that Jim and I bought Jacob a Batman gift, we would make sure other DC characters would also be represented (generally Superman). There have been many coloring and activity books, but this year for his birthday we tossed in the coolest little things ever!

Of course when left unattended…..