Super Boy

I was struck by the words on a package of underwear I bought the other day for my son Julius: “Super Boy.”

Most papas think their sons are Super Boys to some extent. I’m no exception. I take great pride in the way Julius Randall, 5, syncopates and does double time as a drummer, swings across rings with such grace and power as to regularly elicit compliments from the playground parenting crowd, and grills grown-ups about what they are up to. This last habit may grate on some friends’ nerves at times, but as a journalist I love seeing him demonstrate such curiosity and tenacity.

I also see some amazing things from him when it comes to words. Julius has this striking way of employing phrases beyond his years—often beyond even my years. One example is the way he can announce bad news, as in: “Mama, I’m so sorry, but Skyla (his kid sister) just poured paint on the carpet.” When he was at the beach with other kids making tunnels and pools in the sand, he said: “Guys, this calls for some tools.”

The “this calls for” phrase was straight out of an old superhero cartoon. That’s not a complete surprise, since he loves watching old Superman and Aquaman cartoons on YouTube.

But Julius doesn’t just imitate. He innovates. The boy who made up some of his own sign language signs as an infant now makes up his own words and turns of phrase. Like “Bizday” as a day of the week in addition to the usual seven. A “double push-up” is when one person does a push up while a second person does one on the back of the first person (I don’t think he and I have managed this yet, but we’ll get there). “The Russian flier” refers to the paper airplane design we learned from the Russian immigrant mother of a circus-school classmate.

In this same spirit of naming, he’s given me a moniker. My wife Rowena and I decided to call ourselves “Mama” and “Papa” before we had Julius and Skyla, and that’s how we refer to each other. But Julius has taken to calling his mother “Mom” much of the time. And much of the time he calls me “Dada”—pronounced “dad-ah.”

He may have picked up this term from his dear friends Isa and Felix. In any event, it is about the last name I would have given to myself as a father. It doesn’t have that hipster/retro flair that partly drew me to “Papa.” And it can come across as babyish. Only it doesn’t when Julius uses it to give me precise, elaborate directions, such as “Dada, put the blanket over your head and pretend the piano is me and the TV is Skyla.” And who cares about hipsterhood when Julius says “Dada” and nuzzles me with his wiry-haired head, or reaches out to hold my hand from his loft bed.

Dada is now one of my favorite words in the world.

Some of my others are ones he mispronounces. Like “breakrast” for “breakfast” and “pokskible” for “popsicle.” Part of me hopes he never gets those “right.”

There's also "hostible" instead of "hospital." However you pronounce it, that word was on our minds today, because Julius spent a traumatic few hours in the local emergency room. He had to get three stitches after splitting his forehead open on a stone wall—as he put it to the ER staff, he was “running on full speed” and didn’t look where he was going.

Julius can be shy and fearful at times. But today he showed he also is courageous. While he lay on a gurney, we talked about how courage means going through something even though you are afraid. Despite some tears and his fear of stitches, he held totally still while his half-inch gash was cleaned with saline water, numbed up, and sewn up.

Our wonderful nurse, Teo, called Julius a superhero. I couldn’t agree more.