Carter (#3) has always been obsessed with “super-dupers,” his term for super heroes. At two, he insisted on wearing his Superman pajamas everywhere–home, church, shopping–and I’d have to dress him in Clay’s matching underoos long enough to throw his in the wash. At four, he began telling everyone who would listen about “baby school” (which took place, evidently, in the Wal-Mart building that preceded the Super Wal-Mart), where babies, himself included, had been taught to fly, do king fu, and fight crime. At six, he scowls every time I kiss him and whispers “Super-dupers don’t like kisses!” I’ve tried to convince him that super-dupers’ powers actually stem from mommy kisses, or that a real super-dupers would NEVER leave a lady in distress kiss-less, but to no avail.

Anyhow. When Carter was almost two, he accidentally got a dose of Jamison’s Adderall. (In the early morning chaos, the spoonful of applesauce containing the pill got shoved into the wrong gaping, bird-like mouth.) After calling poison control, we settled in for what we knew (from experience, unfortunately–the same thing had happened to Clay a couple years earlier) would be a very long day.

When Clay had taken the medicine, he had slept the morning away, then lapsed into inconsolable, restless fussiness until bedtime.

Not Carter.

Carter was unusually quiet all morning, until he walked by the deck door leading to nowhere. He began to giggle, a weird, gurgly laugh.

“Baby Guy,” he said, pointing to his reflection in the glass door. “Baby Guy flying.”

“Guy” or “man” was Carter’s way of identifying a superhero. I looked at his reflection, which did look kind of like it was floating over the lawn.

“Mmm,” I said. Because what are you supposed to say when your toddler is tripping out on amphetamines?

Carter babbled happily about Baby Guy for the next half hour. Then suddenly, he began shrieking.

“What?” I cried, running to where he stood in the dining room.

“Doggy Man! Doggy Man!” he gibbered, pointing at the sky.

I looked at the sky (which did not, by the way, contain any flying dogs), then back at Carter. Evidently

“Doggy Man” had swooped out of the recesses of Carter’s subconscious mind to do battle with his arch-enemy, Baby Guy.

I scooped Carter up and tried to distract him with an episode of “Caillou.” No dice.

Baby Guy and Doggy Man battled for the rest of the afternoon, Carter swinging from laughter to shrieks, depending on who was winning. Doggy Man seemed to be getting the upper hand, and by three o’clock, I was desperate. I formulated a plan: we were going to outrun Doggie Man. The moment Jamison got off the school bus, I bundled the kids into the van and began to driving toward the McDonalds.

In Ashland.

Doggy Man trailed us for a while, but by the time we got to Blueberry, Carter had fallen asleep, giving everyone a two-hour, greenhouse-gas fueled reprieve from his psychic battle.

Of course he was awake the rest of the night, but Aaron (who still worked at Lakeview at the time, and had missed the early stages of the Doggy Man debacle) took the night shift. I roused occasionally to the sound of Aaron snoring, only half-conscious, on the couch, while Carter babbled about Baby Guy and Doggie Man, and the TeleTubbies responded “Eh oh,” like they were sympathetic to his plight.

The moral of this story?

1. Don’t feed your toddler amphetamines.

2. Ashland isn’t so bad, after all.

3. You really WILL laugh about it five years from now.

The End