Spiderman-iac

I took Abby to Kyle's birthday party tonight. When the movie ended, the last of the pizza and cake had been eaten, and the games had all been played, Abby and I made our way back to the car, party bags in hand, where I noticed that I had three missed calls from home on my cell. (I had kept the phone in the car to charge, since the battery was beyond dead.) A small wave of panic washed over me since George doesn't usually ring my cell when I'm out unless it's pretty important. I returned George's call on the way home and learned that Georgie had come down with a fever and had not eaten anything all night. In fact, he had stayed curled up in my bed most of the time Abby and I had been gone, which is rare for him especially since his Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop were over for a visit. When Abby and I walked in the door, I pulled Georgie onto my lap, and sure enough, he was hot as hell from head to toe. As Abby told him all about the party, his head hung towards the floor. I figured he must have felt pretty bad, so I coaxed him into chewing a Motrin to bring the fever down quickly. After he reluctantly swallowed his medicine, I asked him about his night, but he would not speak a word to me, or anyone else, and continued to stare down at his feet. I asked George if he had been this quiet all night, but he said, "No, actually. He was crying about a Spiderman car for the first hour or so after you left. He cried so much, I wonder if that's what made him sick."

"Spiderman car?" I asked. "What Spiderman car, Georgie?"

"Tile." Georgie responded miserably, but finally with a little interest in conversing.

"Tile? What are you talking about - tile?"

"Tiii-ile! Ti-ile!" he whined, and so I continued asking him insane questions about floor tiles and game tiles until I figured out that he was not, in fact, referring to tiles after all. He was talking about Kyle (clearly pronounced "tile" in two-year old dialect) and the Spiderman car that Abby had bought for the party.

"You want the Spiderman car that Abby bought for Kyle?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said. "Tile's bider-man tar. Not Tile's. Mine. My bider-man."

I should have foreseen this "spidey-envy" when we were at the toy store buying Spiderman toys. I should have realized that I could never get away with bringing a Spiderman product into our house and then back out again for any reason. Who was I kidding? I have the boy who does not waste time pretending to be Spiderman, but instead has convinced himself, and truly does believe, that he is in fact the superhero himself. I reassured Georgie that first thing in the morning, I would take him to the store to buy him his very own Spiderman car. The instant this promise was made to him, his temperature instantly plummeted back to 98.6°, his mood elevated significantly, and he has been happily coloring at the table (in his Spiderman coloring book, wearing his Spiderman pajamas) with his sister for over an hour, chattering away the entire time (about, who else, Spiderman).

I've been sitting and thinking about what new illness Georgie may be coming down with, but then I started to wonder: is Georgie really falling ill with the flu, or could it be that he is literally sick without Spiderman? And was it really the Motrin that brought down his fever so rapidly, or was it the promise of a new "bider-man tar" that healed him?

I think that we are, without a doubt, dealing with a Spidermaniac.