L. is one smart cookie.

I offered to take her somewhere for lunch yesterday after her sadness about M. and C. going off to school.1 She quickly agreed and reminded me that a year ago on the sisters’ first day of school, I took her to a bookstore and she got to pick out a book. Can we do that again, she asked. How could I say no?

We cruised over to Barnes & Noble and browsed through the children’s section. I told her how much money she had to spend and pointed out several slim reads based on Despicable Me and the Toy Story movies. But she wasn’t interested in those. She even ignored the Learning to Read books based on the Marvel super heroes, which she generally loves. Instead she found a Marvel set that has two books and 41 magnets that can be placed on six different background scenes. It was more expensive that her budget, but when I thought of her crying as we said goodbye to the sisters, I caved.

"OK. Just don’t tell your sisters how much this cost."

So we spent last night reading through the books, which offer the origin story for some of the biggest Marvel super heroes and super villains. This in addition to the three Marvel shows that are added to the DVR each day. She knows more about comic books at four-and-a-half than I ever did.

There’s an Internet celebrity who loves to talk about reading comics with his five-year-old daughter on the many podcasts he appears on. I’ve always laughed at his stories, but never had a frame of reference for them. I think L. is about to suck me into a world that I somehow managed to avoid 35 years ago.


  1. BTW, she insisted to me all day that she was just tired. But finally, last night, she told M. and C. that she cried when we left them in their classes because she missed them.