My boss brought his daughter and step-daughter to work with him one day. They are both about seven-ish. They don’t spend a lot of time here so they must be hearing him talk about his day at home. He isn’t a vet. He handles the business part of the practice.

They started playing Vet Clinic and I could overhear them. I really started paying attention when they started explaining to their imaginary clients that unfortunately they had a lot of drug shortages so they wouldn’t be able to get their medication for a while. Things are tough even in Imagination Land.

Then we heard one explain “If he had a fever and he still has a fever then what we are doing isn’t working. We need to try something else.”

The boss and I looked at each other. He asked, “Did they just show a better understanding of medicine than 90% of our clients?” I said yes.

Eventually they found a container of an over the counter herbal antinflammatory that we use. It is called Pain Plus. One explained, “It is for pain and it works plus!” Correct. Then they decided that it was for pain and pus because that rhymed and was grosser.

The imaginary client must have given them some pushback though. They ran the concern correctly up the chain of command to their father. They also implied that the client was going to be sorry that they pushed things this far. By this point, I wanted to hire them.

During a break in the game they were playing with their dog. He was getting overstimulated and pulling on hair and socks. I picked him up and put him in a kennel to calm down a little. A while later, their dad had let them dog back out. When they saw me they started loudly telling a story about how a superhero named (their dad’s name) saved their dog Pico from the Evil Dr. Me.

“Wait a minute!” I countered. “I saved your hair and your sock. How come I’m not a superhero?”

They collapsed in giggles.

And that is my supervillain origin story.