Super Teddy/Stupor Mike

Mike kinda got back 2 the present tense 2 tell abt Merrie's reaction 2 Mike's "Super Teddy" story:

April,

Formerly little sis. After showing my daughter the video I rented of the Superman movie, she finally understood Super Teddy. She looked at the pictures of me and Super Teddy in the photo album and she said, “You had a SUPER TEDDY?” I think perhaps she thought I had a teddy bear that was an official toy from the Superman movie, which might be an expensive collectors item now. Considering all the pictures in the photo album showed Super Teddy flying, she might have thought he could really fly like Superman. So I explained it to her, “Well, not a real Super Teddy. He was just a Teddy Bear with a napkin tied around his neck.” It turned out my daughter had been setting me up, because almost out of nowhere she pulled out a teddy bear with a napkin tied around his neck.

She said, “Like this?” I responded, “Exactly!” However, it wasn’t exactly the same. My Super Teddy was a larger teddy bear which had a greater striking force when hurled, and also had longer ears and face not unlike a dog. My daughter’s teddy had short ears and looked much more like the traditional teddy bear, as if someone, let’s say, was an inexperienced artist and had no idea what a teddy bear looked like, versus a more experienced artist who had a little plastic figurine of a teddy bear they could copy.

I was on the verge of saying, “And I’d toss him through the air yelling…It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s Super Teddy!” as you may remember me saying just yesterday when I was describing the picture in the photo album. However, at this point, I got a phone call saying the “It’s a bird. It’s a plane.” stuff is copyrighted, and I needed to come up with a different catch phrase. So instead, I said,
“And I’d toss him through the air yelling…Hiiyaaaaa Kowabunga Super Teddyyy!!”

Then my daughter said, “Hi-yaahhh Kowabunga Super Teddyyy!” and she swung her arm in an arc that mysteriously caused her teddy to go from behind her head to straight ahead from her. It was quite amazing. I was about comment about how she needed to say, “Hiiyaaaaa” instead of “Hi-yaahhh”, unless of course she was separating “Hiiyaaaaa” across two lines and needed the hyphen, when there was a silent crashing noise from the other room.

My daughter and I went to see what made the silent crashing noise, and it turned out that my daughter’s teddy had landed on my lovely Deanna’s new giant-sized indoor plant. The plant lost a few leaves and looked relatively uninjured, so when it comes right down to it, it was a fairly unsuccessful Super Teddy kind of landing. More astounding than the plant damage was my lovely wife Deanna who said, “Is this what you call a good example?” My daughter and I were both distracted by Deanna’s misshapen right hand with only two very long fingers, aside from her thumb, which is technically not a finger. Normally I would come up with a witty comeback to a question like that from my wife, but those two fingers were freaking me out and all I could think was, “No…but I’d call it a great toss!” And it was a great toss, even though it was not a good example of how much damage and destruction a true Super Teddy can cause.

I'm sure that given enough time, my daughter will achieve Super Teddy greatness. I think I need to lock up all my breakables now.

Love,
Michael Patterson

Mike, don't B 2 surprised if U get a fone call from the ppl behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and/or the ppl behind The Simpsons--asking U 2 cease an' desist using "kowabunga."

Howard, I got yr message abt the "babysitting emergency" that U and Bea have 2nite. I will B there @ 6 2nite.

Apes