My children, two and five, believe that mealtimes are an unnecessary interruption to their busy lives. My youngest will happily chow down on a handful of Cheerios as he’s bouncing off the walls, but sit him down for a meal and we have a battle ahead of us. My eldest doesn’t even want the Cheerios! Occasionally he will eat a dinosaur tree (broccoli), but most of the time he will even refuse a big plate of spaghetti if it stands between him and his toys.
Whilst they have decided that their intake is not an important part of daily life, their output has not decreased. They have just as much energy, just as much get up and go, as they did while eating seconds and thirds at every meal. I must therefore hypothesize that my boys derive their energy not from food, but from some alternative energy source. I have narrowed it down as follows:
1. They have Kryptonian blood coursing through their veins and derive strength from the yellow Sun.
2. The plastic ring that was given to my eldest by a nice lady at the grocery store actually contains a piece of Starheart and has him encased in a life-supporting force field.
3. They are not merely my sons, but are the avatars of some long forgotten god such as Khonshu.
4. They have a genetic mutation, a la Hank McCoy, that will only fully appear upon reaching puberty. Heaven help me!
5. They were caught in a nuclear explosion while at daycare, and now have the ability to create identical duplicates. What I am seeing is not one active little boy, but several more sedate ones.
6. They are able to convert impact energy into raw strength. Therefore the more active they are, the more things they crash into, the stronger they become.
7. Their energy is linked to their environment, and somehow increases as parental energy levels decrease.
8. Their natural physiology was enhanced by immersion into an electrical field conducted by a chemical compound.
9. They were bitten by radioactive spiders.
That’s why they have more energy than I do 99.9% of the time, surely.
*Musings on my superhero children were originally posted at Wired.com/GeekMom.
