🇺🇸 Go Ask Daddy About Captain America’s Shield, a Vegetarian’s Yield and Paint at the end of the Field

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My friend – let’s call him, Stewie –loved comic books.

I wasn’t a fan. All the Superman stuff seemed like kid play. As a kindergartner, I was all about Spiderman. By middle school, I’d moved on to bigger things: the NFL, Star Wars, and girls, if there wasn’t a football or any Star Wars figures around.

Anyway, Stewie loved comic books.

After school, Stewie treated me to a Slurpee at 7-11 while he shopped for comics. I picked the biggest cup available to mankind and filled ‘er up. But what should have been a stellar day of cold refreshing food coloring suddenly became an episode of Cops.

Stewie emerged from the comic book aisle, his red windbreaker tucked tightly in the front of his Rustler jeans, to conceal – I’m estimating here – about 752 comic books stashed against his chest.

Just look casual, Stewie. Just look casual.

Maybe no one will notice a 73-pound kid stealing 47 pounds of comics. Hollering and a chase ensued. A goateed convenience-store clerk chased Stewie far into the forest. I left the filled-to-the-brink gigantic Slurpee cup on the counter and walked out slowly.

Just look casual, Eli. Just look casual.

This story was a really long way to segue into the first Go Ask Daddy question from my kids this week. And because of the kids, I’m now all about The Avengers. But I don’t think I’ve had a Slurpee since that day.

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1. Does Captain America’s shield come back to him like Thor’s hammer does?

The shield – unlike Stewie’s red windbreaker – never fails him.

The shield is Cap’s primary weapon. Like Horacio Caine’s sunglasses, it’s also his primary accessory. After bouts with shield-shaped shields that didn’t bounce back to Captain America, President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented Cap with a circular shield as a gift.

Tony Stark, aka Ironman, added electronic and magnetic components to the shield to give it boomerang-like properties. I could have used one in the 7-11 that day.

A T-rex is mighty, yes. But sometimes it pays not to take the biggest bite of your Jurassic loved ones.

2. How big is a dinosaur’s heart?

Substantially large. Dinosaurs are philanthropists for such causes as the Wounded Raptor Project, Spinosauruses Without Borders and Anklosaurus Red Cross.

Soft tissue makes lousy fossils. We can’t be sure of the size of a dinosaur’s heart.

But, take the Brachiosaurus, a considerable herbivore. At almost 30 tons and 85 feet long, it would take a massive ticker to pulse blood through that body. Almost as big the ones you walk into at kids’ museums.

Brachiosaurus wouldn’t probably eat eggs, not unlike some people we know …

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3. What do you call people who won’t eat anything from an animal, but eat eggs?

Not sure, but do you know why the tofu crossed the road?

To prove he wasn’t chicken.

So, the non-omnivores among us baffle me. Especially if you don’t eat eggs. If you can’t enjoy a juicy cheeseburger, I’d hope and pray you could eat deviled eggs and eggs goldenrod at least.

But alas, no.

Some vegans, and vegetarians, even, make exceptions to suit their lifestyles, such as allowing eggs, or cheese, or even grilled pork chops.

Vegans, though, eat no animal products, only plants and tofu. To each his own. If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

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4. Was Hershey popular back then?

Grace saw a “vintage” Hershey’s tin at an antique mall (and by vintage, I mean circa the 1990s, when we thought it’d be cool to make new stuff look like old stuff).

When Milton Hershey developed chocolate bars in 1895, he had a corner on the market. Baby Ruth didn’t come along until 1921, and M&Ms in 1941. We had to wait until 1971 for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and until almost 1980 for Sour Patch Kids.

Hershey was so much the only show in town back then that he could create his own town, complete with a bank, zoo, hotel, churches, and eventually an amusement park and hockey team.

And Hershey’s even vegan-safe. Yay!

I’m grateful Belk Bowl officials let us go on the field in the last 2 minutes. It’s cool to get a feel for the game down there. It wasn’t such a good day for the Gamecocks.

5. Do they go for touchdowns in the end zone with their name on it?

They tried that, but for a few oakland raiders players, the 12 seconds required to lip-read the end zone could prove unfair. Only in bowl games and the Super Bowl are both teams’ names depicted in football field end zones.

The home team’s name is featured in the end zone.

And how cool would it be to score in your rival’s end zone and spike the ball all over their name and colors, and maybe even rip out a little touchdown dance on it? And if someone does the same in your team’s end zone? Well, you remember that for a while.

Not that I hold grudges. But Stewie, if you’re out there …

You still owe me a Slurpee.