Aunt Amy aka Professor Darkness

Backblogging - Thursday Night

Aunt Amy came for dinner. For those of you who don't know my much younger sis Amy, she is something! She is so fabulous I wrote a theme song for her, titled "Aunt Amy, she's MAGICAL!" (She deserved something special for the screaming dragon and the screaming monkey and any screamers she intends to gift him in the future!) So, I was telling her the story about the night J and I drove by her university -

"Look, J there is Aunt Amy's university. She is going to teach there now. When you teach at a college or university it's called being 'a professor'."

"You mean like Professor Darkness?"

and then J showed her just what "Professor Darkness" looks like:

Doesn't he bear a remarkable resemblance to Aunt Amy?!?!

Well, they both are all powerful. Although I bet Aunt Amy can outrun, outswim and outbike old Professor D. (She did do nicely in that Triathlon she completed in 2006). And, if they get too close to the Sun she can probably really smoke him, after all she survived (and completed) the "canceled" Chicago marathon this past fall in 90 degree temperatures.

If you have no idea who Professor Darkness is, he is the "bad guy" from Planet Heroes. At some point in the last year J became fascinated with "bad guys". I am still not all that comfortable with this, but I fake it I guess. It seems very important to him, and when I have tried to think of where the whole "bad guy" thing comes from I realize it is pretty prevalent in, well, most everything. Stories seem to need a protagonist and an antagonist and so "bad guys" are really just normal. And, in the world of 4 year old boys with big imaginations, heroes need people to save and villains to save them from. I, as a Mommy, am frequently called on to "be the bad guy" which basically amounts to being "it" in a game of tag except you also have to make menacing faces and scary sounds intermittently while chasing your prey, er - child. It also helps to further enhance the experience if you can hold your hands up while simultaneously curling fingers so they look more claw-like.

At first I really thought the Planet Heroes were, well, ugly. And, yes, plastic. But, they have inspired some pretty imaginative play and I am amazed at some of the things J (and E) knows about the solar system now. So, seeing how much he loves them and giving them more of a chance they have grown on me. Now I see the appeal in all their alien uglyunique-ness.