Black Hats

When I was a young child, I loved to role-play with the other kids in the neighborhood. It helped that I was by far the oldest (except for Lenore, but she was weird, so I was still alpha child) and therefore got to pick the game. Many times it was school; Dad would clear out the garage and set up a few little chairs, a chalkboard, and the teacher's desk. I would alternate lessons on reading and math with scientific investigations by the creek or mock varsity football games across the adjacent front yards. Sometimes we played Army; I would oversee the construction of elaborate pine-needle forts in the small stand of pines behind the Marriners' house and have the recruits practice marching -- a lot. As I approached 7 or 8 years old, one of my favorite games was Charlie's Angels, even though I was the only girl (except Lenore) in our gang old enough to really play a role. We played a version of "jail," where I was always the Angel Samantha (the smart one) and the other kids played a gang of bad guys who locked me up somewhere and I had to figure out how to escape, usually by convincing one of the littlest kids that he would much rather be a good guy. Mom also made me a fabulous Wonder Woman costume, complete with foam bracelets and a lasso, that I loved desperately. What better role was there??

Our kids like to dress up in superhero costumes. S has a Wonder Woman costume. Unlike mine, it was bought at a costume store, but it is still well-loved. It's extremely bedraggled now, with some homemade parts, like the headband made of construction paper, replacing inexplicably lost parts of the purchased costume. R's is a Spider-Man costume, which he has really officially grown out of. Together they run around "killing" bad guys. A child of 70's TV, I always say, "we don't kill the bad guys, we just put them in jail, right?" but their lust for bloody justice always resurfaces.

When they watch cartoons, the kids also assign themselves roles. Like her stepmom, S usually chooses the best roles for herself, even when an alternative arrangement is more obvious -- for example, she chooses to be Diego rather than Alicia, preferring the eponymous leading man over the older sister secondary character. R seemed to take his constant relegation to sidekick in stride, so I tried not to be overly concerned. After all, isn't processing a childhood of second-fiddledom part of what helps younger sibs avoid the ulcers and neuroses of firstborns?

D and I did both wonder, however, when R started choosing his own characters -- and usually seemed to choose the Bad Guy. We must sound ridiculous sometimes, wheedling in artificially high-pitched voices: "But wouldn't you rather be Aladdin than Jaffar?" "Big, black jets aren't always bad!" (They are, on Little Einsteins.) R was cheerfully resolute. "I'm Jaffar. He's the bad guy." The big, black jet. The Bobos, Swiper. Bad guys.

This is the sort of thing that keeps me up at night. Is R getting some kind of erroneous message that he's a bad kid because all his various parents yell at him too much and I haven't finished reading Parenting the Strong-Willed Child, yet? Is he going to internalize a sense of self-loathing and be shooting heroin into his eyeballs by age 12?

Well, this morning while D was in the shower and I was putting on makeup, he started teasing me. This is as much part of his happy wake-up routine as the morning sports show on TV. "You don't want the NHL package again this year, do you?" He knows I want to be able to watch my Penguins on TV, even if I often nap through the second period and/or lose the stamina to watch when things go badly. "Of course I do," I said, rolling my eyes. "What I really want, though, is to go to Pittsburgh to see a game." "Maybe we could do that in March," D said -- which I know was meant partly as an ongoing dig at how ridiculously long hockey seasons are and partly a legitimate suggestion given the impending birth of our daughter. "We can go to games here in DC," he pointed out. "You did OK last year -- I stood up and cheered for the Pens." He's right, too; although D is completely relentless and unreasonable about the Steelers, he has embraced my hockey team, and I know he's done that for me. Still, he knows that I don't enjoy watching my team be the away team. "I know," I hemmed; I hawed, "You did. It's just not that fun for me." I was thinking, among other things, of the time I rode the Metro alone all the way back to Bowie after a game the Pens won, when the Metro was full of jersey-clad Caps fans and the taunting was so bad another Caps fan ended up sitting next to me so I wouldn't feel so sad. Unlike when rooting against Philly teams, for example, rooting against the Caps didn't make me feel literally physically threatened, but it's just no fun -- even when we win.

"That's really a fundamental difference between you and me," D pointed out. "I mean, I like watching the Ravens at home, but . . . ." "You'd actually rather watch them play in Pittsburgh or somewhere, wouldn't you?" I sputtered. It dawned on me, suddenly. This is absolutely true of my husband. Every time he has cause to set foot in Pennsylvania he grins and tests me by saying he's going to wear something that says "Roethlisberger sucks" or some t-shirt with Calvin (sans Hobbes) peeing on Pittsburgh or something. Luckily, he doesn't really have too many shirts actually like that, but he does tend to wear something with the Ravens insignia on it any time we get within 10 miles of the PA state line (or within 10 miles of my family). "That's sick," I concluded.

But then, I put down the hairbrush and stared at him in slack-jawed realization. "Your son! R! He's just like you! He prefers to be the bad guy!" Whew. It's genetic.

Not me. I like to play the good guy, and I like it best when everyone around me is a good guy. If there were a way to play hockey, or football, with all the excitement but without someone having to lose (except Dallas, Atlanta or New York), I'd prefer it. Now, at least, I'm not worried about R mainlining meth in middle school any more (well, not for this reason anyway). Now I'm worried that eventually, he'll have a wardrobe of t-shirts boasting profanities (or bodily fluids) aimed at my beloved hometown. I can hear myself already: "We don't actually pee on Pittsburgh, we just try to win the game, right?"