Super

Every spring, our city has a curbside junk pickup service that you can pay a nominal fee for. You put essentially anything out there that your garbage service won't take. Most of what ends up on curbs doesn't make it to the landfills; instead, neighborhood junk-seekers show up with trailers and vans to scavenge everything of interest.

In our garage lived the remnants of young apartment life: shelves, a couple kitchen tables with chairs, a broken boom box, a microwave, a TV stand, and various boxes of detritus that we didn't want. I decided early on that with the longest driveway on the block, this chore would go much faster on Rollerblades. It was a stupid idea disguised as a fantastic idea.

I didn't fall, but I certainly contorted my body in unnatural ways to avoid falling. I had serious apprehension about landing with a kitchen table on top of me, especially with that uneven gravelly part at the end of our driveway that shoots you shakily into the street.

Today I'm very sore, and I also have a two-inch gash on my hand from a half-busted, six-foot bookshelf whose adjustable shelf peg got a little feisty. I used a kitchen disinfecting wipe to scrub the blood off the particle board.

I think there's a fatherhood Superman complex that afflicts new daddies. Suddenly there's this little person who thinks you're the greatest man on Earth, thinks you can do anything, and around the five-month mark, she becomes more adept at expressing it. And every once in awhile, you believe her.