I was sick enough that I had to lay out of work the other day. Luckily, I had some company, my son— and the Masters of the Universe.
Something has been going around and my family can’t seem to shake it. I was sick around Christmas and forced myself to power through, because I didn’t want to ruin the holiday for everyone. After that, everyone in the house has had a turn with the crud, especially my wife who has been sick twice. Finally, it boomeranged back around to me again.
I left work early the day before after a sudden wave of exhaustion hit me. I was dizzy and my head hurt. Not being prone to head trouble (headaches anyway, people have suspected there is something wrong with my wiring upstairs for years), I knew something was wrong. By that evening, I was flat on my back, every muscle in my body aching and what felt like an anvil sitting on my chest.
My son, who had aleady been warm and sporting a nasty cough off and on, stayed home from school the next day. My wife warned me as she left for work that the boy was sleeping in bed next to me.
He didn’t sleep for very long.
Considerate little guy that he is, when he got up to find and return with his tablet, he had already turned down the sound on whatever game he was playing. This means I slept a little longer. I didn’t really wake up until he started using me as a playset for all his action figures.
Granted, I had already gotten up once to make him Pop-Tarts and cereal before heading back to bed, but I wasn’t really awake doing that. I was on autopilot at the time. So, I had drifted into that light doze parents slip into when there is a kid nearby that you have to keep an ear out for.
I awakened to Jitsu driving the Landshark over my legs. Or was it Trap Jaw landing the Sky-Sled on me? Either way they soon called in reinforcements. Fisto and Evil-Lyn and Meckaneck and a host of other heavily-armed plastic warriors equipped with axes and ray guns began to occupy all the empty space on the bed and a few key points of the high ground, the mountains created by my blanket-covered legs and torso.
All the while, my boy was subjecting me to a running chatter of the hows and whys behind this earth-shaking conflict. It seems Trap-Jaw, that psychopathic cyborg criminal from another dimension, was really good now, but the other heroes didn’t believe him. I grunted some acknowledgement as the battle renewed.
Now, was it really an earth-shaking battle or was I just shivering with fever? I’m still not sure. Either way, this kid had plenty of energy and I hadn’t heard him cough once. This was a miracle recovery on his part or he put one over on his mom, and if you know my wife, then you know you don’t put one over on her very easily or maybe not at all.
Soon, He-Man arrived, riding the robot horse Stridor, and poor one-armed Webstor also appeared. My boy has yet to relocate that missing arm, but he still enjoys Webstor’s “backpack combined with a zip line built into it” and helpfully demonstrated how the action figure’s gimmick worked before my bleary eyes.
My little buddy next stated his intention to relocate Castle Grayskull to somewhere on the increasingly crowded bed. There I had to draw a line, forbidding it in my crow’s caw of a voice. I suppose it was to be expected, really. I had literally made my bed on this one and now I had to lay in it.
I had wanted a son and, wonder of wonders after the sonograms had predicted a third daughter, my wife had literally delivered a son. So naturally, my boy had the collection I had always dreamed of when it came to He-Man stuff. My father had always disapproved of what he saw as the vaguely fascist overtones of “Masters of the Universe” and my mother was in no rush to indulge me with more toys. The G.I. Joes and Transformers were already enough.
But He-Man and the Masters of the Universe was currently enjoying a nostalgic revival. Hasbro was reissuing new, more poseable versions of the classic toys. Getting them for my new son seemed like a no-brainer— even if he was too young to have tiny plastic swords and such anywhere near him when I started buying the things.
The idea was that one day we could have huge battles and play out epic sagas with these toys. The reality was with three active kids and a tiny house there is rarely the time or open space to do that.
Seeing the time and the opportunity, my son brought the huge battle to me. It was unintentionally very sweet. It was also both amusing and encouraging to note that, in spite of all the lasers and other weapons, he typically had the combatants resolve their issues by talking or combining their efforts to rescue some other third party.
Speaking of rescue, my wife eventually came home to rescue me. Sweeping into our bedroom, she told our son he needed to start moving all these “dolls” off the bed. With all the offended dignity a five-year-old can muster, he grumbled back that “they aren’t dolls! They are action figures!”
