Shopping with the Super-Natives

Excursions out of the jungle are made on a case by case basis. I try to get supplies gathered while the natives are in the care of the saintly visitors called “Grandma and Papa”. Several times throughout the week we make the journey as a tribe.

The elder native has a wonderful and lively imagination, and the younger native likes to imitate the behaviors of his respected sibling; thus excursions out of the jungle either go very well or very, shall we say, interesting?

This afternoon we reached the end of our supply of fresh fruits and vegetables, so we packed up and headed to the local market. On the way out the door I requested of the elder native, that he put something on to keep warm. It was a particularly chilly day outside of our indoor jungle. He greeted me at petroleum powered vehicle, wearing a full Batman disguise complete with cape and mask. I found this rather adorable. Knowing that no one in the supermarket would think I dressed him that way, off we went to gather supplies.

The whole way to the store he stayed in character making me address him as “Batman”, & I was to be addressed as “Batgirl,” the younger native would answer to “Robin”. When we first arrived at the market passersby seemed to find this display amusing and rather cute as I initially had, however, the downside to having an extremely imaginative native is their refusal to break character. So as we got deeper into the store he would point at random to a stranger and yell, “Look Batgirl, a bad man!”The younger native caught on to this, highly amused by our new game and ran around pointing at elderly women yelling, “Look, mean guy!”

At this point I really had three choices: try to ignore the game and avoid the cold stares of the “bad men” around the store, try to distract the natives in order to quiet them, (unfortunately, previous experience has taught me that once they are into a game there is little hope this tactic would produce the desired results)or, option three, I could dart quickly around the store humming the theme from Batman as the natives squeal with delight and play along.

I chose option three. I have discovered that you get through the checkout line faster by doing this as no one wants to be stuck in front of the crazy caretaker singing the batman song with the two natives simultaneously fighting crime from the shopping cart.

I am happy to report that we arrived safely back to our portion of the jungle and the city can sleep safe tonight as Batman and Robin have now identified and vaporized all the “bad guys”.