Highly-Focused Yet Nearly-Baseless Hate

I write this short article to fill what I see as a glaring hole in the Internet.  I know I am not the first person to search for the words that ultimately brought you here.  You aren't alone, friend. I feel your pain all too well.  Here it is:

"I hate the Superkids".  There it is. The phrase that Google thinks no one has ever expressed before this moment, apparently.  Once the bots get here there should be no more of this "No results found" nonsense. 

If the last two paragraphs are just gibberish to you, consider yourself blessed and feel free to move on to the next article. The rest of us are just gonna hang here for a bit. 

Like most hate, it's not based in logic.   I mean, how can anyone legitimately hate a clearly effective phonics-based mechanism that is designed to help kids enjoy their path toward literacy?  I don't know.  There's just... something there. But if I had to rank the level of hatred, I would put it somewhere above my hatred of the CarFax fox but below that of the original USell guy. Maybe on par with that of Sid the Science Kid and his classmates at the Montessori School for the Hyperactive, Lumpy, and Oddly Hued. 

Yeah, that's about right. 

Jeez, I... I hate a lot of things. I'm sure that's a healthy sign...

With the Superkids it's a photo finish between what I hate most: the androgynous style of the art or the other-worldly naming conventions of the gang members. There are somewhere between, like, ten and fifteen hundred of these...um...kids and their pets every one of which is absolutely special, uniquely skilled, and yet totally interchangeable and forgettable. Kids apparently have no problem figuring it all out and keeping it straight but all of the parents I have talked to have at least some difficulty. Is this Tac or Toc? Is Ettabetta a girl? Is this kid seriously named Icky? Wait... "Fast Cat" is not the cat?

Definitely making it into the top ten of my grievances with these characters is the bipolar nature of their emotional responses to anything that happens to them. Every event is a cause for ticker-tape-parade-level celebration (finding a lost mitten) or bottomless grief (being the "rotten egg" because you are last to jump in the pond).  Cripes, find a center, would you? I mean, while I was writing this I discovered that the apple in my lunch was unexpectedly juicy and sweet but I also noticed a typo in a test procedure I wrote, but I'm not going to respond by doing a few cartwheels of joy immediately  followed by offing myself with my stapler in a fit of suicidal depression. 

Everything in their whole world is "fantastic" or it is a "flop" - there is no middle ground.  I mean, how can a small wooden desk be "fantastic"? In my life I have built a number of desks, and not one of them has ever been described as "fantastic".  "Well-built", sure. "Adequate", closer to the mark. "Interesting", uhh... nope. I'm pretty sure a desk would need to be crafted out of materials not normally found in this dimension or it would need to be known for its ability to slay dragons to earn the title "fantastic".  

And who besides movie critics describes something as a "flop" in normal conversation?  "Tac  tries a handstand. The handstand is a flop." Pfft. Frankly I would rather have my (then) five-year-old read "Tac tries a handstand. As you can see, Tac kind of sucks at handstands."

Finally are the after-the-book questions that don't test reading comprehension as much as they test my ability to resist reading them in the most sarcastic tone imaginable. For example, I try to not say things like "As if you could possibly give half a rat's behind, do you think the clubhouse is a good place for the stuffed lion?" Here's another: "(Heavy sigh) After what's-her-face gets a letter from whosits, how do you know she is happy? It couldn't possibly be the fact she is smiling rapturously and hugging her friend, so it must be something we're missing... (rolls eyes)".

But, hey, like I said, I can't argue with the method. Teaching a kid to do something "simple" like reading, riding a bike, swimming, tying a shoe or any of the other things we all "just do"  is really challenging. And maybe... Just maybe... if the Superkids were around when I was growing up people wouldn't have to deal with grammar and spelling errors littering every single thing I write like shattered cinder blocks strewn all over a bike path.