Finley: Dadda, Chase is Batman and Noah is Spiderman. What superhero could I be?
Me: You could be Wolverine - he has Adamantine claws and always heals his wounds.
Finley eyes me dubiously.
Me: He also has big sideburns like Dadda.
Finley: I want to be WOLVERINE, then!
Me: *tear*
Finley runs to his mom, shouting, "Momma, I have SIDEBURNS!"
Not sure I need to add anything more to this. Except to say that it constantly amazes me how much he understands and pays attention to everything around him. A little while after the above conversation, he asked me, "Dadda, if Wolverine can heal his wounds, can he get cancer?"
Even at three, he is obviously affected by experiences with cancer in our lives. When he was two, our next door neighbor passed away after fighting liver cancer through three remissions. And his grammy is now a breast cancer survivor, though the treatments have obviously left her physically changed. So when I told him Wolverine would never die from cancer, that bolstered his enthusiasm for being him when they play superheroes at school.
It sealed the deal when I started showing him pictures of the animal Wolverine was named after. He wanted to pet its fuzzy head.
