Captain Adventure and Me

I think it’s time for Bacon Bit to shed his infant name and move on to his toddler handle. And I think the toddler handle is Captain Adventure.

Captain Adventure is a climber. Captain Adventure is a flyer. Captain Adventure…is a faller.

Yesterday, Captain Adventure was exploring his realm. Clutching the coffee table, he made his way from one end of the room to the other, talking and chuckling all the way. I was watching him with half an eye while reading the newspaper as he made the circuit once, then twice.

The excitement of cruising around the coffee table palled swiftly. So he moved on to other pursuits, first the great fun of pouring all of the blocks out of the Rubbermaid box, then banging them LOUDLY on the coffee table while singing “BAAAA BAAAAAA AAAAAAH BAAAAAAAH!”, then putting them into the shoes neatly lined up on the fireplace.

After pulling the shoelaces out, however, he really was out of ideas. Out of sheer desperation, he moved on to pushing the Rubbermaid box around the floor. He vanished from my sight as he passed in front of the sofa in the playroom, but I could hear the Rubbermaid scraping along on the Pergo.

Scrape…scrape…scrape…{silence}

I looked up, and he was grinning at me from over the top of the sofa. As our eyes met, he shrieked with delight and began clawing his way to the very crown of the sofa, a.k.a., the liftoff pad. The stinker had used the box to climb up onto the sofa. And now, he was heading for a header.

I jumped up, got tangled in my chair and landed in a most undignified manner on my hip. Ow. Disengaging from the killer chair, I scrambled on hands and knees the short expanse from the kitchen table to the sofa just in time to catch him as he plummeted from the top.

He laughed, he burbled, he thumped me on the back, shouted, “Mah-muh! Mah-muh!” and attempted to bite me on the shoulder. He felt it had been a great success. He felt great about it!

I felt nauseous. I thought I needed a nitrous pill. I began plotting a way, any way, that I could go back to the nice, quiet safety of the cubicle farm. How, I asked myself, could I swing hiring a babysitter to take these gut-wrenching moments for me? How quickly could I get back to work? Could I start today?!

But the moment passed quickly. Once the phantom image of his beautiful little face smashed to bits on the Pergo faded from my inner eye, I recovered my balance. I chuckled (albeit wryly) about his utter lack of fear, and started plotting trips to Six Flags. I have a feeling Captain Adventure and I are going to rule Six Flags!

Meantime, however…I think I’ll just make sure that Rubbermaid stepstool doesn’t get left on the floor when he’s done taking all the blocks out of it.

Cleaning up after the superhero is, after all, the time-honored duty of the faithful Sidekick.