Captain Bianca

(This is a true story)

If you searched “what is a parent’s worst nightmare” into google search bar, my picture at four years old would be the first thing to pop up. No matter how many “parent guide” books were read, there was no manual for a young girl who would rather cause mayhem than sit in her room and play with Barbie dolls. Wrinkles were inevitable for my parents with the amount of stress I would cause them. I guess you can say they categorized me as a “visual learner”, as in anything I saw someone else do I would try...and this includes the unrealistic actions you would see in cartoons. It was a full-time job for my mother to make sure I wouldn’t pull any crazy stunts, but as much as she tried, she couldn’t prevent everything.

In one of my innovative episodes, I decided I wanted to be a superhero and with that came superpowers, which included the ability to fly. As I sat at the kitchen table, I noticed a familiar superhero, Captain Underpants, fly across the screen. As I said earlier, I’m a visual learner, and I took it upon myself to express my own ability to “fly”. I knew that my boring mother would try to stop me, so I devised a plan. I waited until she was distracted eating dinner and decided to go into the living room with my older sister. As she sat on the floor playing with her own dolls, I continued to replay Captain Underpants in my head. It is my time to shine. I began jumping on my couch going higher and higher as I repeated in my head “Captain Bianca” to motivate myself. When I gathered enough courage, I jumped off the couch but to my own dismay, I did not have the ability to fly and quickly dropped to the floor and landed right on the corner of my stone fireplace. I immediately regretted this decision as my mother rushed into the living room with a panicked look on her face as she screamed for my father. My sister sat there crying as I touched my head and when I pulled my hand away, had a red liquid all over my fingers. My father rushed upstairs, with a surprisingly non-shocked look on his face and I was rushed to the hospital and later to a plastic surgeon. A few hours later, and I was good as new.

You would think after an episode like that I would forget my dare-devil ways and calm down a bit. Well, you’re wrong. Two weeks later I tried it again, just in case my powers might have been delayed in kicking in, and I got stitches on my other eyebrow. Safe to say I was no longer allowed in the living room and my mother didn’t take her eyes off me again. I began to believe that maybe not everything is possible, but it doesn’t hurt to try it and find out if you’re capable.

Ever since those years of my life, I haven’t been afraid of risk and my biggest threat to myself, my inability to have fear, also became my greatest strength. I began taking more risks my whole life (less life-threatening ones) and achieved several goals that other kids my age may not have found possible. I may have walked away with two scars from my ruthless “superpower” experiences, but I also walked away with the courage to take on the world and that is the best superpower I could ever ask for.