The Carolinian Trail

March 13, 2001

March Break has begun. It's a two-and-a-half-hour drive from my daughters' home to my door. We haven't seen each other for more than eight weeks when I pick them up on Saturday after Marian's art class. So the first part of the car trip involves some catching up. Awkward questions like, "Anything fun happening at school?"

Of course not. Brenna, seven, who is witty but tender-hearted, seems to get disciplinarian teachers. Marian is a nine-year-old live-wire who always manages to get "the best teacher in the school." But does she like school? Of course not.

Still we find things to talk about. Even when I put a CD in the player—Native American and Andean flute music—we carry on a lively discussion, of "Which song is this?" and "Where have we heard it before?" We don't fall quiet until part way through a second disc.

"Okay, let's make up superheroes," I suggest. "We can each invent one, with a name and special abilities. Then we'll imagine a disaster and figure out how to solve it together."

"All I can think of is Superman and Spiderman," says Brenna solemnly.

"No, I mean we'll create ones of our own. Who wants to go first?"

"I will," says Marian. Barely able to contain herself, she shrieks, "Toilet plunger man!"

"Oh, and what special abilities would he have?" I ask, sarcasm edging into my voice.

"He can clean up toilet spills," she squeals with laughter.

"Stop the silliness," I say for the first of many times this week. It's my hallmark expression.

I try to set a more thoughtful tone by introducing Thundercloud, who can pass through things or foil her opponents by turning into a cloud, and stunning them with an electrical charge. My daughters could use a female superhero, I think. Eventually Marian adopts Thing Man, who can turn into inanimate objects to fool the bad guys, then turn into a net and trap them, and then a helicopter to fly them off to jail. Brenna's hero is Odie, who I suggest might tie up villains with his tongue.

Our first foe is Square Hairball Man, who lives in a giant hairball and has a machine that turns everything into squares: car tires, birds' eggs.

"That must be painful for the birds," I say, "trying to lay square eggs."

Marian is hysterical in the back seat.

But once our superheroes start working together to solve the problem, my eldest starts to sober. When Brenna suggests a quick demise for Square Hairball Man, Marian proposes an alternative.

"No, Thing Man traps him inside and turns into a machine that makes bad guys good. It turns Square Hairball Man into a normal person, because even bad guys deserve to live."

Earlier this very day I entered into an online discussion thread with a couple of friends who were arguing for the death penalty. Our subject was Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, surely two of the most heinous real-life villains alive in the world. But to me, capital punishment is just institutionalized murder, and I said so. I believe we are all interconnected, and killing criminals to make ourselves feel better doesn't make us more civilized, or help us face and solve the social problems that produce such desperate, hateful people.

So when I hear Marian say the nine-year-old version of this same thing, I am both pleased and perplexed. I don't think the line between good and evil is usually very clear. Few people, if any, deserve to be exalted above the rabble of humanity as either hero or villain. And there is no moral-sanitizing machine for people who demonstrate destructive behaviour. But Marian's desire to enact compassion is what seems to matter the most.

So the three of us go on to vanquish other foes, each one receiving the same merciful treatment from Thing Man.

Then crafty Brenna, challenging the trend, thinks up Godzilla. We can kill him because he's a monster, not a human.

But Marian still insists on benevolence, loading Godzilla on a barge and shipping him off to a desert island where he can harm no one, but she can keep him as a pet and provide him with all the food he needs.

"Okay, Dad, tell us another problem to solve," Brenna says.

"I think I need to take a break," I say. "My imagination box is sore."

And it's only an hour into our first day together.