HOLDING ON

STANDING AND QUICK PACING back and forth n the kitchen I flip range dials and roll oven racks while throwing the freezer door shut behind the chilled milk jug in my hand. Dropping it beside the orange juice carton I slide back over to flip the eggs left to sizzle only seconds ago and a dark shadow comes at me in a flying kick somewhere near mid-thigh high. A comic book character that I never sought to study... in short form... comes Batman style and I nearly drop the eggs and hot cereal from the glass cooktop. I lunge over the spinning bat character to block the spillage and he swings his leg in a daring spin low and wide near the floor. "I'm trying to get breakfast made boyyyy! Get outta here!" He throws back, "What's for breakfast?"

I have been plaguered by Batman, a Minion and Spiderman... Michael Halloween and I think there was a Black Panther at some point. Wolfman has challenged me in the kitchen as has Aquaman and did I say Spiderman? Do they stop? I don't think so. It's today's child, hungry for something to eat... from the store or burger shop; and eager to include a granma nana or great granma in the plan of everyday activity... on his call. It doesn't pay to reflect on days gone.... when we were children ... before children became kids... and eating breakfast was s duty. Being still was a duty. Keeping voices low was a duty. Best of all... staying out of grown folks way was a duty heavily expressed. There was no such thing as "Batman did it" or "the puppet " on the end of his finger "did it." Duping mom or dad, or worse... granma or any grand dad brave enough to sign to conformity as that level of contender."In this ring...."

Gone are the days when Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd on the screen, by order, was enough to keep children in the basement until they were ordered to "play outside" in regimented form. Sure there were misunderstandings... like playing in the massive rain puddle under the highwire after a storm... or sitting on mom's car hood while waiting for her to come out of the house... even following an older cousin in a regimented line where he was "in charge" to burn the waste in grand dad's alley incenerator, as instructed. They had foibles in that day as well, but no flying Batman kicks and punches as granma makes breakfast on a hot stove for them to eat their fill.

When did times change? It would have had to be during the 80s when the Star Trek and Star Wars brigades demanded robots and star cruisers move by remote control across the living room floor or down the hall where mom was trying to vacuum around the Starfleet and Barbie outfits stuck in the sofa and under every other thing outside of daughter dear's bedroom where unicorns that grant wishes and Chatty Kathy never recited a day's math problem... that was the decade before. Maybe it was at the notion of the 90s when limited issue of anything too young for graduating high school and leaving for college was a sin.

I'm almost as sure as my mother and aunt who never had... nor wanted any, that children took a turn for the worse when comic books replaced text books and COVID dictated degree of educational input. It was when staying home for a "cold" was a presidential mandate, worldwide. It was when children were told they RULE THE WORLD.