“Jo jo” stories (yes, that’s “jo jo” as in the fried potato) will probably always be one of my favorite things about my son’s childhood. I’ve mentioned them a couple of times in previous blogs, but wanted to feature one example this time as this one is particularly funny and I think has now become my son’s favorite.

I’m not at all sure how telling my son a “jo jo” story started, but somehow it became a fairly common ritual before putting him to bed most nights. I would make up a story involving characters eating jo jo’s, jo jo’s coming to life and doing silly things, and all sorts of creative ideas as long as a jo jo was somewhere in the story. Lately, I haven’t been giving as many of these as I’ve been typically putting my daughter to bed while my wife takes care of my son. However, the other night he asked me to tell one and boy was I ready 😊

I don’t quite remember all the details, but believe I started the story in a pancake restaurant where my son his mom and I all worked. (This part came from him telling us at one point that when he grew up he wanted to have his own restaurant with his mom and I working there with him…pretty adorable right? He’s a great kid!) Suddenly a villain came into the restaurant and a superhero ( Spider-Man?) was chasing after the villain. My son sprang into action and gave the villain a venomous potato to make him sick so that Spider-Man could arrest him and take him to jail. My son is very into playing with Avengers LEGO’s right now so he really enjoyed this next part: Spider-Man and the Avengers were so grateful that they offered my son a spot on the Avengers Team! He became the new hero: Potato Man!!!

My son absolutely loved this story and has asked me for more Potato Man stories nearly every day since. We’ve even pretended to be Potato Man and Iron Man taking down villains. The best part was his desire to create a Potato Man suit! My wife and he designed the Potato Man suit you see in the picture featured in this blog and he now wears it proudly as he patrols the house stopping villains with his potato launchers.

As my son grows his desire to play pretend and wear a paper bag costume may wane, but my memory of his excitement over being Potato Man sure won’t…

This is fatherhood…