“My stomach hurts,” murmured Master9.
This has been happening a lot lately. But, finally, we think we’ve worked it out, and Master9 is thrilled about it.
Except for the tellysitter that is ABC2, we don’t watch a lot of telly in this house. But on one of those rare occasions we had it on we happened to catch Stan Lee’s Superhumans, a show seeking out the extraordinary among us who actually have amazing abilities.
From a jaw droppingly quick gunslinger to a guy who can withstand temperatures which would give me blisters to a bloke with a sledgehammer like head. It was a good find. Especially as they attempt to work out why these people have these gifts (for example, the temperature guy had really good circulation).
“Wouldn’t it be awesome if we had a super power,” said Master9.
“What super power would you like?” I asked him, expecting maybe he’d like to be able to fly or read minds or have retractable Adamantium claws.
“To be able to freeze things,” he grinned.
“So,” I said, “you’d like to be like…’
“Elsa.”
No gender stereotyping here.
You might think this is all irrelevant to Master9’s stomach pains, but you would be wrong. Because this week we worked out what was causing the pain in his stomach.
Homework.
“If you’re worried because you haven’t finished your homework you have pains,” we told him. “So just make sure you do it.”
“But that can’t be it. It’s real pain,” he told us.
We know. That’s the thing with anxiety. So whenever it’s happened lately, we’ve brought it to his attention.
“So are you seeing the connection yet between being worried about something and the very real pains in your tummy?” I asked him.
It turns out, this week he finally saw it.
And with it came a revelation.
“This is awesome,” he said, unexpectedly.
I was lost.
Turns out he thinks the physical connection between worry and anxiety is something very special.
“Looks like I’ve discovered my superpower,” said Master9 cheerfully. In fact, he looked down at his belly and gave it a friendly pat. “I am so cool!”
We’re here if you need us, Mr Lee. But in the meantime, Master9, how about you just do your homework?
Side note: Am I the only person who starts singing “I unplug the jukebox – I do it for the flavour” whenever they start talking Adamantium in the movies? On a not entirely related matter, I just looked it up and discovered I’ve been belting out the wrong lyrics for thirty years and it’s actually “unplug the jukebox and do us all a favour”. I’m pleased. The lyrics never made sense to me.
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“Raising a family on little more than laughs”
