Stairs, My and Charles Xavier's One Weakness

When I was really little, my mother made a Superman cape for my older brother. He loved that cape. He wore it constantly for about a year, and then was rather suddenly required to stop doing so, for reasons upon which I shall expound. I'm going to drop some nostalgia on it, son.

Since Superman wore a cape, and could fly, one can hardly fault my bro for the logical leap that lead to local leaping. Big brother was convinced that he had acquired the power of flight. He would demonstrate this new ability by taking running leaps over chairs, bounding over ottomans, and jumping onto couches.

Credit where it's due, his hang time was rather impressive.

Now, where it gets complicated is the plane of the intersection of my older brother liking to teach me life skills and him believing he could fly. He'd met with some other successes in imparting wisdom, notably mining for nose gold and my introduction to cursing, so you can forgive him for wanting to share his mastery of the aether with me.

Draping the precious cape over my shoulders and firmly tying the strings, he set me about my lessons, hopping over furniture. After some time had passed, and I had yet to demonstrate the capacity for leaping tall chesterfields in a single bound, frustration and desperation set in, and drastic measures were undertaken.

He stood me at the top of our basement steps, and pushed.

Well, shoved, really.

Heaved, maybe.

One might argue that at this point, I did surpass his previous airborne exploits, as I cleared an entire flight of steps on the way down. Man, I'm so glad that vacuum was there to break my fall.

Mother happened to be downstairs and not far from where I landed. I recovered fine, didn't even break a bone. Toddlers are resilient that way. My sibling senior got his butt paddled pink and that cape got put away.

True story.