Relaxing Superhero Story

EJ 9-1-1,

Captain speaking.

Oh,

Hi Sally.

Is everything.

.

.

Are you okay?

What do you mean?

Your eyes.

.

.

Are stuck like that?

Wow,

I thought that was just a thing parents said.

No,

No Sally,

I'm not laughing at you.

I promise I'm not.

This is certainly an emergency.

Did you try taking a nap?

Okay,

Okay.

It's okay,

Sally.

You'll be able to get back to work in no time.

Try resting your eyes until we can get there and set things straight.

No,

I'm not.

I'm not laughing at you.

Sit tight.

We're on it.

Transferring to dispatch.

Hero,

This mission is.

.

.

Hmm.

.

.

How can I put this.

.

.

Delicate.

Sally Smith has stared herself cross-eyed,

Focusing on her latest silver smithing project.

Wow,

I thought that was just a thing I said to my kids.

I'm going to send you with a proprietary pair of sunglasses that are.

.

.

Well,

You'll see.

And hopefully,

So will Sally,

They will loosen up the spasms that are likely creating her predicament.

She'll also likely need to start a series of daily eye exercises,

Which I'll download into your BattleBuzz helmet.

This is why it's so important that you and Captain EJ take breaks to relax and unwind.

Otherwise,

You'll tie yourself up in knots of all kinds.

Your ENVs are waiting.

EJ.

.

.

Captain EJ and Hero to the rescue.

Let's begin.

You are here,

Standing beside your best friend Captain EJ,

Sharing a puzzled look as Mr.

Honeybee hands both of you your very own pair of googly-eyed glasses.

You look to Captain EJ,

Then to Mr.

Honeybee,

Who is wearing costume glasses with a fake nose and mustache attached,

As if he is attempting to disguise himself.

He hands you the glasses with the utmost seriousness,

And you cannot tell if this is another installment in the long history of prank wars between Captain EJ and his right-hand man.

But Mr.

Honeybee is serious.

These are the glasses that will help Sally.

I'm serious.

Try these out.

They'll change your life.

Okay,

But why are you wearing a fake nose and mustache?

Oh,

These?

This was my proto-prototype.

I had to dig into the Halloween costumes to find a spare pair of glasses,

Just in case the prototype didn't pan out.

But it did.

Taking the googly glasses with who-knows-what kind of technology built in,

You put them on with suspicion,

Still watching Mr.

Honeybee's face in case this is a prank.

Once the glasses make contact with your face,

Though,

You realize quickly that this is anything but a prank.

These glasses have built-in massagers.

You close your eyes and enjoy the quiet sensation of your eyes finally relaxing after a long while of being opened and attuned to every little thing.

It's as if a thousand microscopic robots were massaging each and every itsy bitsy muscle around your eyes that you never realized you had.

Take a slow,

Deep breath in through your nose.

Close your eyelids as tightly as you can and move your eyes in a big,

Sweeping circle to feel all the strength you have here.

Then slowly breathe all the way out through your mouth.

Let your eyes relax in their sockets even more deeply.

Let your jaw hang loose and feel the area around your eyebrows unfurl.

Our busy days imprint most on this part of our face.

Sometimes eyebrows will knit themselves into knots and your jaw will clench itself even when we don't realize it.

With our eyes still closed,

Mr.

Honeybee ushers us each into our ENV and sets its autopilot function to Dormir.

Before we can help Sally unwind,

We first have to reconnect with our own relaxation.

People do not realize how crucial rest is to being a superhero,

But that's part of what we'll do on this mission.

When we get to Sally's smithing ranch,

We cannot find her anywhere.

We walk the perimeter of the sprawling property calling out her name and becoming increasingly worried with so many machines around.

After doing two loops around her ranch and a thorough sweep of her smithing workshop,

We finally hear a clue as to where she could be.

The stumbling sound leads us to her tool shed,

Where we find Sally Smith standing in the corner as if in trouble.

She hears us coming for her and immediately regrets asking for help out of embarrassment.

In an effort to make her feel better,

We put our googly-eyed glasses back on.

A little laugh might lift her spirits.

Just go back to command center,

Captain EJ and Hero.

I'll figure this out.

I don't know how this happened to me.

I thought that was just a thing parents said,

But it's true.

My eyes are stuck crossed,

Looking at my nose.

I can't see anything.

Nothing.

I can't smith silver.

I can't smith silver?

My last name is Smith.

I can't show my face around doormirror anymore.

Literally,

My life is over.

Sally,

Come on.

We have something for Mr.

Honeybee that will help.

Look at us.

We're wearing them too.

Wearing.

.

.

What?

I can't tell if it's just my blurry vision,

But it looks like you're wearing.

.

.

Googly-eyed glasses?

How on earth will those help me?

Are you holding out two pairs?

Why can't I grab them?

Oh no,

They're right here.

Here.

There you go.

Put those on and watch.

I wish I could watch anything.

Uh,

I mean experience.

Just put them on.

Trust us.

Sally puts all of her trust in us and reluctantly tries the strange glasses,

Which have an immediate effect.

Sally slinks down in the corner relieved.

Her eyes were so strained that the six main muscles that control our eyes all revolted at the same time.

We sit down on the floor of the tool shed that's covered in silver dust,

Listening to our longtime friend.

Some emergencies are urgent situations that require swift action,

But others require sitting cross-legged and cross-eyed with a friend until they feel strong enough to stand up straight again.

Sally Smith explains that she has been up for the last two days,

More than 48 hours,

Fixated on fixing up one of her family's heirloom smithing tools.

She hasn't eaten,

Stopped,

Or hardly moved from the hunched-over position she assumed for this project.

Curious about how she ended up in the tool shed,

She confesses she doesn't know where she's at because she cannot see much of anything.

Sally tried walking forward when we tell her we're in the corner of her tool shed.

She realizes she was walking in circles instead.

With a big sigh,

Sally Smith finally pauses from her work and her story and relaxes fully into the eye massage behind her glass.

She falls into an exhausted sort of half-sleep trance and doesn't even notice when you lightly remove the glasses from her eyes to do a few eyeball exercises that Mr.

Honeybee supplied us with.

One in particular that will help her spastic muscles is called the pencil push-up.

As quietly and discreetly as I can,

I search high and low for a pencil in Sally's workshop.

When I find one,

You sit by Sally to show her what to do.

Take another slow,

Deep breath in through your nose and focus on the tip of the eraser on the pencil I'm holding out in front of my face.

Then slowly breathe all the way out through your mouth and follow the eraser as I move it closer to your nose.

Sally Smith does the same.

Before it goes double,

I move the pencil farther away,

And that is what finally unlocks Sally's stuck eyes.

Just like a push-up for your arm muscles,

Keeping the eraser in focus as it moves closer and then further from your nose engages the six solitary muscles around your eyes that help you focus intently.

When these become strained,

You can't focus as well and thus cannot be your best.

You slip the glasses back on Sally's face.

While we console and encourage her with our own struggles of how difficult it is to leave a mission behind us once we're done,

We tell her that things will stick in our minds long after the mission and that we have to intentionally distract ourselves with focused fun.

She giggles at the idea of focused fun,

Which is extra funny while she's wearing googly-eyed glasses,

But focused fun is something we believe in fully,

A secret weapon in our superhero tool shed.

Without realizing it,

She launches into another story,

Talking exaggeratedly with her hands before taking off the glasses.

Sally leads us through her smithing workshop,

Regaling us with the stories behind each of her tools,

Half-done projects,

And silver trinkets that fill up her space.

Sally doesn't realize it,

But her eyes have uncrossed.

She's able to walk and see straight once again,

But to our dismay,

She goes right back to fixating on her fix.

It's just so exhilarating when you finish a project,

You know?

It's like you work and work and work,

And then bam,

You're all done.

You're done.

It's done.

And fixing up this one little thing is going to make a huge difference in the amount of silver I can smith in a day.

It's this tiny little dial.

I have bifocals to help me focus.

Ugh,

My eyes get so tired,

But it's so fun,

You know?

This must be the focused fun you're talking about.

Such a good idea.

Thanks,

Team.

I'm back to work.

Sally,

Don't you think you should let your eyes rest a bit more?

This is not focused fun,

It's just more focus.

We have more eye exercises that are good for strain,

You're gonna.

.

.

Before we can fully warm Sally Smith as she's headed right back into stuckness,

Her eyes give her a warning she can't ignore.

She goes cross-eyed once again,

And looks to each of us with one of her crossed eyes.

We'll have to do one more eye exercise,

But also figure out a way to unstick Sally from her fixation on work.

Immediately regretting her actions,

She pleads with us once more.

Take your slowest,

Deepest breath in.

And rub your hands together as fast as you can to warm them up.

Then slowly breathe all the way out through your mouth.

And place the warmed-up palm of each hand over the corresponding cheekbone.

Cup your hand over each eye,

And close your eyes to focus instead of your breath lightly applying pressure to this tender part of your face.

Once again,

Sally's eyes are unstuck.

And once again,

She rushes right back to work,

Having learned nothing from our emergency visit.

This calls for more drastic measures,

Which alarm Mr.

Honeybee back at Command Center.

Uh,

Captain,

What is that enormous claw-looking thing?

And what are you gonna do with it?

It looks like it should be in one of those toy machines.

Haha,

It does kinda look like one of those toy-grabbing claws.

But this,

This is gonna pluck Sally out of her fixation.

She needs focused fun,

Mr.

H.

She's exhausted and refuses to eat.

Uh,

Happens to the best of us.

You gonna do roller coasters,

Or an escape room?

Roller coasters,

For sure.

Sally,

Hero and I are gonna pick you up with this claw.

Sally,

Can you hear me?

I seriously love smithing silver.

I don't even mind that it turns me silver.

I kinda like shimmering.

This old tool has to be,

What,

200 years old?

When did we discover silver?

Imagine if we didn't.

Whoa.

What?

Is this my mining claw?

Captain E.

J.

,

Hero,

Are you plucking me out of my workshop with my own claw?

Yep.

Now you're gonna learn what focused fun is.

Out in the sunshine of a beautiful bright day,

Sally's eyes finally get a break from staring at silver shimmer in favor of lush green.

We put her between us,

Front row for the highest looping roller coaster this amusement park offers.

And she loves it.

You wait for the feeling of your belly dropping on the rushdown before it climbs up high once again.

This is focused fun.

This is how we can be as strong and valiant as we are,

Hero,

Because we make the time to have fun together.

It's just as important as our discipline and training are to our missions.

Woohoo!

This is so much fun!

Thank you,

Captain E.

J.

And Hero.

Woohoo!

E.

J.

That concludes our adventure.

I can't wait to see you again.

Captain E.

J.

,

Over and out.