Daily Sketch
You know how you don’t want your mom to chaperone your field trip to the Museum of Natural History because she’s just going to embarrass you about what she considers hilarious stories about your nudist phase when you were two and a half years old, or how you once ate so many shrimp that you barfed on your cousin Stacy in the middle of her wedding dance, or how she still has your trophy for eighth place in a figure skating competition? You know, stories so evil that even Lord HellMet starts to shudder a little (we’re talking about the supervillain who dropped a burn victim’s ward and a firefighter’s station from the sky at the same time and tried to force the Shrieking Violet to pick one or the other - as if!).
But then, that turns out to be the least embarrassing part of the whole trip, because it just so happens that Lord HellMet decides to attack the museum while your class is there and your mom is chaperoning because, you guessed it, your mom is the Shrieking Violet. And she’s gotta disappear for a second and zoom around the revolving door or whatever and pop back in all decked out in her Shrieking Violet glory - and this is the real crux of the issue, because, like most superhero attire it’s aerodynamic and streamlined and wouldn’t look out of place as the wallpaper on some of your classmates phones, and you gotta listen to them making jokes about how much they wish she’d catch them falling off a skyscraper and you’re like a) it’s not fun at all getting caught at near terminal velocity by bulletproof arms of steel - been there, done that, got the fractured ribs to prove it; b) she’s like a million years old and has, like, a husband and stuff; and c) that’s my freaking mom, guys - but you can’t say any of that, obviously, so you just try to spout off some half understood feminist mumbo jumbo and then follow that up with some all too well understood cold hard facts about how she can literally squeeze your entire body into something the size of a grape. And when none of that works you say stop joking about how big her butt is and watch her beat Lord HellMet into the ground with the jaw of a stegosaurus.
But even that’s not the worst of it because little did your Mom know but Lord HellMet heard from one of his henchman who heard from his mechanic who has a cousin in marketing who plays poker with your best friend Tim’s Dad who overheard you telling Tim that the Shrieking Violet’s one weakness, weirdly, is anyone sporting a combination of a mullet and a handlebar mustache (just one of many reasons you’ve never been to Florida - which is a real drag because one of your favorite movies is Avatar and you’ve always wanted to go on the Avatar Ride at Disney World), and just as your mom seems to be about to finish him off, he rips off his infernal helmet and your mom goes catatonic at the sight of the most awful mullet and handlebar mustache that’s ever been seen outside of a State Fair and you just know, even if you don’t know yet about the cousin in marketing or the poker game, that somehow someone heard you and now, because of you, your mom is about to be killed by the most ridiculous looking half redneck trucker half demonic medieval knight.
But it gets worse. Because there actually is something you can do about it. Like your mom, you have superpowers. Unlike your mom, you’re a big fat coward. It’s not so much that you’re scared for yourself, not really. It’s more that you're scared for everything else. You’re scared that you’re going to start breaking things and you won’t be able to stop. And you don’t even have a cool costume, anyway. Who thinks they’re going to have to fight off a supervillain on a school trip?
But you start ricocheting off of hard surfaces, and unfortunately, more than a few soft surfaces, although you don’t mind so much when one of those softer surfaces happens to be Kylie and she topples into the fountain - not after what she put in your locker last week (and she can’t complain because you know for a fact that she shoved at least seven dollars worth of quarters into her pockets while she was “drowning”). And after quite a lot of damage to some rather priceless artifacts and a good deal of high speed yet inexpert barbery with a fourteenth century BCE Sumerian hand sickle, Lord Hellmet’s been reduced to a more or less bowl cut and half a mustache - enough for your mom to snap out of it and save the day.
But then, just as icing on the cake, your mother, the woman who has bankrupted newspapers and toppled governments and even once arm wrestled a god to keep her identity a secret, comes out of her revolving door changing booth and starts gushing about how her little boy is the brand new superhero in town and insists that all of your little friends get an autograph.
And after all of that, your mother has the gall to be offended when you ask her to not go on your science camp with you. It’s infuriating.
