Oblivious: what if there was a very good reason everyone pretended to be oblivious about becky's alter ego?
Sally Botsford tried not to react every time a new headline with Wordgirl appeared in the newspaper, it was very hard knowing your daughter was out there in the world, going head to head with villains every day while trying to keep up a normal life, even if said daughter wasn't hers by blood but by adoption.
Yes, she had always known her daughter was wordgirl, had known since she and her then fiance at the time had stumbled upon a smoking rocketship that had landed just under lovers peak. She had been torn between her duty as an officer of the law to report the strange incident and her own motherly instinct when they had investigated the wreck to find a young girl clinging desperately to a monkey of all things. It was her love of comic books that had the motherly instinct winning out. She had read enough to know that this young girl, wherever she had come from was an alien, and judging from her young appearance, perhaps from a world that was long gone.
It had helped that Tim's father was a practical man whom had gotten the family pickup to get the rocketship out of where it had fallen and into their own backyard where they could pass it off as a tree fort. The legal papers had come soon after, and they found their selves the parents of both the young girl and her monkey. She had never been so sure she had made the right decision about not telling anyone about the adoption as when Becky had first started showing signs of her powers.
The very first incident happened when Becky was three. She had been sitting at the table, trying to solve the crossword before she had to head into work when Becky had said, "Obfuscate, to confuse, bewilder or stupify."
That had been the last word she had needed to finish the crossword, and a three year old had not only known it, but had defined it! It wouldn't be the last time she heard her young daughter defining a word that should have been far beyond her capacity to understand, but when she brought it up to Becky's teachers they had laughed it off.
"You should feel proud of your daughter for having such a large vocabulary. It takes a special person to raise a gifted child."
And she did feel proud, every time Becky brought home another glowing report card, every time she saw her using her super strength and speed not to intimidate but to rescue others. although she did find it hard not to scold her daughter when she was out doing her thing as Wordgirl and Becky would accidentally slip up.
Like the time becky had been accused of stealing the pretty princess figurine and had called her mom. She had to act fast, so she had acted like she hadn't heard Becky calling her mom when all she really wanted to do was pick her up and take her far away from the whole mess. But everytime she thought about confronting her daughter, about telling her she knew becky was wordgirl she was stopped by her knowledge of what would happen if anyone were to find out. Becky would never know a moments privacy, she could just see government officials tryin to convince her daughter to solve their problems with her super strength, or even worse if one of the villains were to find out about their family.
Now she knew that the so called villains weren't very threatening, but that wouldn't stop them from threatening Becky's family if they knew it would stop wordgirl from always thwarting their plans. Or worse, if there were ever a real villain, one who actually wanted to rule the world, they wouldn't stop until Wordgirl was out of the picture.
So she sat by, pretending to be oblivious and hoped that one day she could tell her daughter just how proud of both of her identities she really was.
End
So I wondered, how could anyone be so oblivious about Becky being wordgirl, especially her parents? And then it hit me, they aren't. I mean, you'd either have to be really stupid (Her mother's a District attorney, so no shortage of smarts there) or you are acting. I'd like to think the latter of the two is true.