There is no place like Evil Lair.
Actually, there's no place like home.
He looks at me with that disappointed look. Oh well, I'm quite used to it.
And the more disappointed he is, the more he pleases me. I like that look on his face.
It makes me feel like I achieved my goal.
"Warden, can I ask you something?"
"Of course, tell me".
"What is a Dod?"
He raised his eyebrows. "A what?"
"Here" I pointed my little blue forefinger at one weird picture in my 1st grade elementary shool book. There was a kid smiling happily together with two adults, a man and a woman, and the word "Dad" was printed in green above them.
"Oh, a dad" he corrected me with a smile.
"Yes… what is it, Warden?"
I must have looked so pitiful to him; he looked at me sadly and said:
"A dad is a man who, with your mom, gives you birth and raises you with love".
I was extremely curious about that, since they hadn't done anything else but singing a song saying "daddy Daddy daddy" the whole day at shool, while I was grounded and twiddled my thumbs having nothing to do, since the teacher had confiscated Minion not to make me annoyingly talk to him.
We were in his office, I was properly sitting on his brown leather chair doing my homework – it wouldn't have taken more than five minutes, I estimated while writing down the solutions of each and every problem in the whole math book – while he was seated on the desk, staring at me.
"That's not right, lil' sir" sounded Minion from his water-bowl, a few inches away from my elbow.
"Oh, right! I forgot to write a number!"
"You're such a scatterbrain" he commented lightly, swimming around in his bowl.
I really wasn't paying enough attention to what I was doing. The dod thingwas still stuck in my mind.
"Do you have a dod?" I asked Warden, keeping my eyes on the math book.
"I did" he said with a melancholic look. "Everyone in the universe has or has had a dad".
"Not me" I replied at once, interrupting my soulless writing. "I'd have noticed it".
He was about to say something, but it seemed he would keep his thoughts for himself.
"You did have a dad, lil' sir" Minion confirmed. "And a mom too. Maybe you don't remember them, but I do".
"Yeah, I guess I remember those two…" I said in confusion, scratching my big head, "… they were blue like me".
Although I have few memories of my first eight days of life, I had never forgotten the faces of them shooting me out of the planet for my own good. I was too small to learn the words "mother, father, family" at the time, yet I knew they were important to me for some reason.
"Wait, but it doesn't make sense!" I objected. "If they were really my mom and dod, why didn't they raise me?"
Warden looked even more speechless. "I don't know, kid".
"So your explanation is incomplete".
I dropped my pencil in a sulk and nervously jumped off the chair.
The day after everybody's fathers would come to shool, and kids would give gifts and painted cards to their own dods. They didn't even let me make one. Which was enough for me to understand I would not take part to their Carreer Day Party.
"They couldn't, lil' sir".
I was too small to understand why they couldn't. In spite of my big brain, I was just a kid.
"You know, sometimes parents are just not the ones who gave you birth" Warden stood up, while I was desperately trying not to burst in tears. "Sometimes, it's just someone who looks after you".
"Minion does look after me" I said. "Don't you, Minion?"
Warden looked puzzled, then nodded.
I smiled weakly, sat back down and looked at Minion. He had always been there, every terrestrial second of my short life.
But somehow I felt Minion was not the kind of person you can call "dod".
"My parents must be disappointed of me right now" I mutter, as I use to after every defeat.
"They aren't, sir" Minion immediately cheers me up. "They know you're just doing your best".
"I hope so" I reply, while changing my ruined evil suit with the same orange uniform.
"Are you done?" Warden looks impatient, walking back and forth out of the jail bars. Minion is locked up in the cell nearby, we both know he'll escape as soon as it turns dark.
"Yes, Warden, don't be in a hurry!"
He snorts.
"What fun, that Warden!" I tell Minion laughing.
"He is, sir!" he agrees, "he looks like a father tricked by his teenage son!"
I don't like that utterance too much.
He lifted me up on his shoulder, while several men in white uniforms – faces I had never seen before – got into my room bringing ladders, buckets and other strange tools.
I was scared, I had never had so many people in my own space and felt outraged of what was mine.
I hugged tightly Minion's water-bowl, with one hand firmly grabbing his neck.
"No worries, they're just doing some routine work in here" he reassured me. "You'll sleep with uncle Joe tonight".
Uncle Joe was a funny bald prisoner smelling like fish who used to entertain me a lot with his card games and stories of lowlife. He was one of the few persons who were not avoiding me or sticking nicknames on me like "blue balloon-head", "you brat" or simply "you"… maybe because everyone in prison was avoiding him too. He kept getting in and out of jail because of his bad brewed cheating.
"Why don't you follow my advice, uncle Joe?" I asked him that night, before biting a huge Mexican style barrito. "If you did, you would not be caught anymore".
"You're very useful, kid" he laughed making some pieces of food nastily get out of his mouth and roll down to the ground. "But let me tell you one thing: I have many friends in here – ok, let's say few friends, b-but whatever, you're a friend, aren't ya? – besides, there's always a bed waiting for me" he explained. "Here we are all the same" he pointed at his piggish uniform, " I don't know what you did and why you are here, nobody can judge you 'coz the others aren't better. Got it?"
Then I got why he kept coming back.
"Ok, time to get back to your cell" he said the day after, and escorted me to my room.
If I had spent a nice night with that funny fatso, as soon as my eyes met Warden's I felt like I wanted to be burned to ashes by a mega death ray-like weapon.
We were walking the long corridor leading to my own cell. Warden was not the kind of person you can chatter to, he hardly spent more words than the necessary – unlike me. I would have always talked, especially when I was a kid. Too bad nobody had time nor interest to stop and listen to the great things I had to say.
"Did you have fun with uncle Joe?" he suddenly said, not changing that serious look.
"Oh yes, I did!" I said enthusiastically, glad for the question. "He taught me a card game and then we've sneaked out to the kitchen and then he cooked me barritos with chully sauce, and then…".
"He what?" he added some astonishment to his usual expression.
Oops, maybe I should not have said that.
"Oh, never mind" he said quickly after that, and opened my room. "Now, get in".
I felt sick. Did he install some new monitoring or complicated restriction systems? After all, I lived in the maximum-security cell.
But I knew it was too late to say sorry for what I had done to that shool place.
In my eight year old outfit, hugging my eight year old Minion, I took all the courage I had and stepped in.
Man, that was unexpected.
"So, you say nothing?" Warden got in after me.
I was so amazed I could not believe my same green eyes, and looked around.
"It's… beautiful!" I screamed, letting go of Minion and heading to the gigantic rainbow painted in bright colors on the wall together with the cutest pets I could think of: bunnies, a unicorn, teddy bears and so on. "And look at that, Minion!"
The place had toys – I had never had real toys before. I felt so excited I picked up one Big-Jim like doll and shaked it timidly, not having a clue about how to play with that sort of thing. "And there's books!"
There was plenty of them: comic books, tales, but also the astrology encyclopedia I was longing to check up to find that Blaupunkt quadrant where I happened to come from.
I was so happy and confused I didn't even notice Warden leaving the room.
Warden escorts me with two guards to my room, pushes me in and personally locks the door.
"Ah, ah, well, good job, Warden!" I laugh at him, but that is not sorting any effect to him.
"All you have to do now is watch me until my next escape".
"You won't run out of jail".
"That's what you believe".
Warden doesn't reply, but just turns his back to me and walks away.
The porthole closes, leaving me alone.
I smell my uniform. Fresh washed, that Warden never forgot to make my personal uniform nice and clean, ready to welcome me back. It may sound weird but you know, it really does feel better in orange shirt and pants after having worn a tight evil suit the whole day, with my hands smothered in leather gloves.
"You're turning 21 in a while" he told me. "You know I can't keep covering up for you any longer".
"I don't want you to cover up for me, Warden".
He sighed.
The armored door was the eternal barrier between us. I was sitting on my swivel chair staring at him, not laughing nor grinning this time, but trying to look as evil as possible.
"If you don't change there'll be trouble for you" he warned. "You risk to be accused of all your crimes you committed, and there'll not be any reduction of sentence".
"Fine… who cares?" I said, as more rudely as I could. "Since when you're caring about me? There's Minion looking after me already".
I stoop up and turned my back to him.
He opened the door and got in.
"I warn you".
"Save your breath, you don't have to warn me" I said, keeping my back to him. "I know what I'm doing and it surely won't be you the one who'll stop me".
"Look, Warden…"
"it's Megamind! ME-GA-MIND!" I turned and shouted in his face as loud as I could.
He had the same unchanging look upon his face.
"Save that filthy name for yourself, you useless bug! I'm going to be the Evil Overlord of this Metrocity and I'm not changing my mind! Listen, Warden! That Metromahn guy will fall under my Evil Power, and you and the citizens of this city will prostrate to my superior intellect! You got it, Warden?"
I was shouting to the door looking Warden's back walk away once more, until even the porthole was closed.
I look around. Just the old good painted walls, swivel chair and Tv. Oh, right, and my tailored orange uniform.
No more bed, no more books, no more toys.
Just the old good, painful familiar words.
Happy Thoughts Make Happy People.
I guess I'll take a nap. Of course it's not like having my blue evil pajama and my bat-like sleepers on, but somehow I feel better like this.
I'm used to it.
I think at Warden, and who knows why, I wonder what is his private life like. If he ever had a son. I know he was married once.
Note to myself: gotta use him as hostage, just once in my life. That would really drive him crazy and force him to change that "you are a hopeless case" look permanently fixed upon his face.
But who on earth cares about that old man?
No wonders he keeps that look. He's been dealing with me for so many years.
he hates me, after all. No, he despises me.
And so do I.
While falling asleep, I'm already thinking to my next genius plan. Forget Warden, I'll kidnap miss Ritchie, yeah, right, she's always been sticking to that beefy mr. Goody-Two-Shoes, she'll make the perfect decoy. But let's leave the details to a more propitious time.
For now, I'm just staying home, recovering for the coming battle.
…
Oh, I forgot.
That Career Day,
Warden
was the greatest.
.
2011, June 05th.
.
.
Hi guys! I wrote this story directly in English, and I have to admit it is easier than translating from Italian (I just hope I didn't make too many mistakes though).
The site is full of stories about Megamind being a father, but what about the feeling he has about parenthood? Minion is more like a mixture of best friend and mother - he cleans up, corrects his words, warns him (maybe he warns him too much) – but surely he doesn't look like the father type to the blue alien.
I've been wondering how was little Megamind's life in prison, and what kind of treatment he used to receive. Warden has been there watching him since he came to jail, and I feel like there is a kind of familiar relationship between them, as I noticed in the first part of the movie when Megamind makes fun of him.
Warden must have really looked after him, more than Megamind himself would admit.
Warden does not look to really despise Megamind – he knows him too much to hate him – though he looks almost disappointed, as though he was expecting him to change but then he realized that would never happen.
When he arrives to the jail (almost the end of the movie), he faces Warren who, with that serious look, welcomes him back in the only way they both know.
Finally, he says sorry to him, to get out of the jail and rescue Roxanne. But since the Warden guy didn't believe him, he opens his mind to him and begs him not to make Roxanne pay for his faults.
I think that's the kind of relationship a boy can possibly have with his father.
Besides, when Megamind says "I'm going home", I immediately thought he meant to go to his Evil Lair but he didn't: he went to jail. That impressed me, since it shows that the Evil Lair was just a mask. They say "there's no place like home", or "home sweet home". Well, Megamind says: "there's no place like Evil Lair", but he doesn't call his Evil Lair a Home.
This seems to be just a huge game for him: causing trouble, disappoint everyone – that is the only way to be noticed for his own personality and not for his blue skin and big head – and then being locked in jail, even thought he is conscious to be free to get in and out at his will.
Here in Italy we don't have Career Day, so forgive me if the idea of kids giving cards and presents to their fathers may look weird, since I had written Father's Day in the first place (here Father's Day is on March 19th, so it's not uncommon for small kids to make special cards or learn some poems at school so that they'll tell their dads once they're back home. Thank you, Karen, for telling me Father's Day in the Us is not in schooltime).
Anyways, since we are close to Fathers Day,
Happy Father's Day
to all fathers!