Secrets

I've had a busy week.  An amazing, and amazingly busy week.  There's been work and play and sleep, and lots of secrets.  You have to keep secrets.  My daughter has a secret, and if she could read well enough to read this, I wouldn't be telling you about it because she'd kill me.

She's a superhero, you see, and she has a secret identity that only her mommy and I are allowed to know.

Her superhero name is Learning Girl, and I'm no longer allowed to say it even when we're alone together, for fear someone else might be listening.  She's very protective of her secret identity.  Superheroes have to be.  She needs a mask and a costume, so I guess we're going to have to help her put one together at some point.

Uh...

If you know me and you know her, when you see us again do NOT under any circumstances mention the Learning Girl.

I'll be toast if you do, because Learning Girl has magic powers, and she knows LOTS of things, and she's always learning new things, so I could be in real trouble if she finds out about this post.  How can she save the world if everyone knows her secret identity? 

Her words, not mine.  Maybe she watches too much television, or I read her too many superhero books, but I don't think wanting to be a superhero is at all a bad thing.  There are a lot of real life superheroes.  Nelson Mandela was one, an amazing man who changed the lives of millions, and inspired hope and change around the world.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is another.  Rosa Parks. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.  Sojourner Truth. 

Malala Yousafzai, who is both a child and a hero.

Every doctor or surgeon I've ever met, every nurse, every emergency dispatcher and first responder, every soldier, and every person who has ever put another person's welfare above their own, or who has made an effort to better the life of another person for no other reason than that it was a good thing to do.  

So Learning Girl watches and studies and learns everything she can so she can fix the bad things in the world.  Last week she fixed my tangled shoelace (which she tangled up in the first place), and this week she struck again.  She ripped the cushions from the leather couch in my dining room (so we like to chill after dinner...so what?  That couch is perfect for reading books...), and revealed all the dark things hiding beneath the surface.  She rescued spoons, cookie crumbs and--to my complete bemusement--a potato!  She even tossed the crumbs in the trash bin and washed the rescued silverware herself, restoring order and balance to the universe.  

She comforted a crying boy on the playground and made him smile again, and she fixed Rainbow Dash's injured foot.

The Amazing Learning Girl--a hero of many talents and many faces.

It's never too early to be a hero.  Maybe she can even teach the comic book and movie industries a thing or two--women are way, way under-represented in the world of superheroes.  Hell, even the female superheroes who ARE in the comics rarely make their way into the movies, like every female Avenger ever.  

Wake up, Hollywood.  Girls totally rock, and not just when they're wearing lingerie on screen.  What's up with that, anyway?