Is he man... or Superman?

In honor of Spirit Week, I share this memory with you today:

During Homecoming Week in Jay’s junior year, one Spirit Day theme was Super Heroes. Although he’d never really taken much interest in Spirit Week before, this year, Jay jumped right in with a plan to impersonate Clark Kent. This was just about right for Jay...nothing too over the top or “costume-y.” (Maybe a cop out, right? Like your gorgeous neighbor who sashays into your cul-de-sac’s annual Halloween bash dressed as something really sexy and perfect, while you went all out with green face paint, warts and shredded duds for your ogre costume. Oh, I see how this is going down. Mm-hmmm. Sorry, I digress.)

So, okay! You want to participate ...Yes! Awesome! Clark Kent is a PERFECT idea. You could totally pull that off! Jay pulled together an outfit of chinos, dress shirt and a tie. He slicked back his hair and he was almost there. He just needed one final touch -- the signature glasses.  We dug around in the play room for something that might work and stumbled onto some 3-D glasses we’d failed to recycle after the last Dreamworks blockbuster. We popped out the lenses and there we had it -- some pretty authentic, Clark Kent-like frames. This was just the right touch and left little doubt as to who he was supposed to be.

Content that he was all set for the big event, I returned to my end of the night task of restoring household order. Way late in the game, though, Jay burst downstairs with a *brilliant* idea. What if he had a Superman tee that he could wear underneath his oxford shirt, so that at the key moment in judging, he could pull apart the button-down and reveal the S tucked beneath. My initial response? A heavy sigh of exasperation.

Because when I say, “late in the game,” I don’t mean "Judging-is-in-a-Couple-of- Days" late in the game. I mean, this was "8 o’clock-at-Night-when-Judging-is-First-Thing-in-the-Morning" late in the game. I hated the idea of going out at that hour but was inspired by his attention to detail. He made a good point. That would be just the right touch.

We had just enough time to zip into Five Below. They can always be counted on for random tee-shirts. We hurried to get there before their 9pm closing. Unfortunately, they had nothing. Where else? Target? Maybe...

This really had all the makings of one of those classically frustrating situations where you see things all the time throughout your travels all around town until the second you need that one thing TOMORROW and then, nope, can’t be found…anywhere. That was my fear. But we were right there. What was the harm of popping in to Target? I wasn’t hopeful at all. I only indulged this running around so that, when we were unsuccessful, as I was sure we would be, we could console ourselves with an honest, “Too bad. We tried.”

Well, it was Jay’s lucky day. “Superheroes” happened to be a theme of one of Target’s tee-shirt displays. We dug through the abundant supply of Spidermans and Incredible Hulks to find one, lonely Superman shirt. YES! (I can’t believe this actually worked!) But, NO! It was an Extra Large! Way too big for Jay’s slight frame, especially under a tailored dress shirt.

Jay wasn’t at all deterred. He set his sights on a young lady across the aisle with a clunky red gun efficiently scanning the tags of a large stack of inventory. “Excuse me,” he inquired, “Do you have any more of these shirts in the back?” She booped the barcode of the extra large tee and scrunched her nose, “No, I’m sorry. That’s our last one.”

Resigned, I started to talk him into the one we had, “We got this, Buddy. We’ll just take that one. We’ll make it work! It’ll be perfect.” I turned towards the register bay and was bee-lining it to checkout (relieved to be heading home to my jammies and fuzzy socks). Jay lingered, though, beside the associate.

“Wait!” he shouted my way and turned eagerly back to our red-shirted friend. “Can you tell what inventory is available at the other Target?” She said she could and, with a just a few taps of the gun’s keypad, she announced that there were still lots of Superman tees to choose from at the other store, including several in Jay’s size!

What? Seriously? Could this gal be right? With a surge of excitement, I rallied and we raced excitedly the couple of miles to the other Target location.

Would there be the perfect Superman shirt waiting for us when we arrived? As promised, there it was!

When does it ever work out that way? For me, practically never. But on this night, we were victorious. We marched triumphantly to the front of the store and grabbed our favorite treats at checkout to celebrate --for me, a Peppermint Patty, for Jay, a Snickers bar.

The next day he wowed the judges with a spot-on Clark Kent look and was a finalist for Best Costume. I don’t think he won, but by then, it didn’t matter. He knew he’d nailed it...as did I. We were both elated with the outcome.