The reason my wife was asking, as it turned out, was because it had occurred to her that I am still casting about for blogonyms for our offspring, and one approach suggests itself due to the fact that all three of the birds which we’ve adopted as the totemic spirit guardians of our babies map to specific comic book superhero identities as well.
Mockingbird was the last piece of the puzzle, as she is admittedly not an A-lister (in the comics she was married to Hawkeye, aka the bow-and-arrows guy from the Avengers, so who knows, if that blockbuster franchise ends up getting six sequels the broader movie-going audience may end up very familiar with Mockingbird as well). The Crow has had his own movie (one which I never shut up about!) and Hawkman was, of course, one of the Super-Friends (at least in the expanded Challenge roster versus the Legion of Doom, which is basically the only roster worth remembering). Coincidentally, the genders line up nicely here, too, in that the Crow and Hawkman are boys and Mockingbird is a girl (a blonde, at that). There’s also an appealing balance to my non-favorites-playing inner geek in that one character is from an independent comic, one is a Marvel character and one is a DC character. It is an idea with merit!
My wife put a further spin on it that I could use the secret identity given names of the three characters to put another layer of distance between the monikers and the reference, which is a good idea in theory but breaks down (in my opinion) in practice. Because the kids’ handles would then be (in birth order): Eric, Bobbi and Carter. None of those strike me as quite fantastic enough. At any rate, the matter remains under consideration.
The real-world tie in to all of this is the fact that yesterday my wife took all of the kids down to the local elementary school so that the little guy could be registered for kindergarten in the fall. He’s been leaving the house to go to something akin to school for years now, but nevertheless his imminent entry into the public educational system feels like a very significant leaving-the-nest moment. I don’t really expect it to be easy for any of us, at first, but it’s important and a good thing and I do expect that before too long it will be hard to remember there was ever a time when the little guy wasn’t a five-day-a-week student. He just needs to spread his wings and fly.
To make the names more fantastic, why not make 'em "Draven," "Agent 19," and "Katar?"
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