The Story of Mary-Lou

You have all seen Soup-er Woman. Don’t try and deny it! I know you have. She is that young girl flying across the horizon searching for danger, making you wonder where those freakish, leathery wings came from. She wears that pink headband and those funky boots but her undies are always on the inside. You may have been a passenger on that runaway subway car she stopped with her extra arms last week or you may know the parachutist she rescued from that cliff top in that National Park two months ago with those elongated limbs. Either way I am sure you know Soup-er Woman but I bet you do not know how she became that amazing hero we all rely so heavily upon to always save the day.

Soup-er Woman, also known as Mary-Lou Smithson was born April 9^th 1995 to John and Sarah-Jane Smithson, both Biology Professors at the University of Florida. Growing up in the Sunshine State Mary-Lou loved the outdoors and so stayed away while mum and dad played in their lab. Mary-Lou climbed trees, swam, rode her bike and spent day after day exploring more and more of her local neighborhood making more and more friends with her neighbors. Any rats, mice or bugs that Mary-Lou found and caught in her travels on her bike were brought home and soon acquired by dear mum and dad. Bugs doubled in size and rodents discovered the ability to think more complexly, even talk. Sadly such experiments never lasted long. Wanting to stay connected to her parents’ work their daughter still supplied the creators with a steady supply of critters. Eventually though the natural order cottoned on to where their kith and kin were going and to the fact that those bugs, mice and rats never, ever came back. So while the humans seemed to love her Mary-Lou was making no friends with the animal kingdom.

By the time Mary-Lou was sweet sixteen she could no longer catch the creatures of nature. But that mattered naught. By then her parents were working on advanced sciences that needed bigger test specimens anyway. What dearest John and Sarah-Jane required were specimens that were about the same size as their sixteen year old daughter. They started adding little drops to her food of the glowing green stuff that made rats grow fingers (and not out of their claws) and mice fly. At the same time this started happening Mary-Lou got her very first smart phone. Knowing that they could not follow the sixteen year old everywhere with their video camera anymore the dotting parents hoped that with a phone and camera combined their daughter might consider capturing any ‘strange’ moments as they happened. Nothing beats raw data and onsite evidence.

So it was that once upon a Thursday Mary-Lou was racing on her hot pink BMX Phantom, a great bike for all terrains but one she was starting to outgrow. The bike seemed to take her further and further from home. Faster and faster it seemed to go and that day it took Mary-Lou past a train line. As the teen heard the train in the distance hurtling along the track she noticed ahead of her a broken down SUV, two flat tyres, parked right in the path of the oncoming train. Mary-Lou could see that she could not reach the car before the train. Further away she then caught the cry of a mother who had just realized her three young children she had thought were safe in the SUV were now going to die. Mary-Lou had eaten her lunch before venturing out and so that gloop her parents were working on for the American Military was coursing through her veins. Mary-Lou saw on the horizon a great chestnut stallion.

‘To be as strong and as fast as a horse right now,’ wished the teen.

Suddenly her legs grew longer and somehow stronger. As she attempted to peddle the bike fell away. Arms too became like the limbs of a filly. Mary-Lou was suddenly galloping faster than she could ride any bike. She reached the SUV and saw clearly the three youngsters trapped inside. With the power of momentum she pounded upon the vehicle causing the glass to smash as the SUV leaped five yards to safety. The train flew past and knocked the girl as the blow from her hooves knocked her backwards. The speeding train’s glancing blow would have been sufficient to crush that car and all those kids. To the teen it was merely enough to knock her cold and break one of those strangely morphed limbs.

It was when she awoke in the local hospital that Mary-Lou had it all explained to her by John and Sarah-Jane. They revealed to their only child how her delivery of specimens had led to further and greater testing which had eventual led to her own unwilling and unknowing participation in similar such testing. Mary-Lou’s parents struggled to take off their scientist gowns and don their care-giver hats instead. A truly dotting daughter, Mary-Lou agreed to continue to assist in the testing and developing of these strange and unusual powers. For the teen had witnessed firsthand just how such powers could be used for good and good was what she hoped to achieve.

These days Mary-Lou keeps a thermos of the green gloop in her Hello Kitty backpack for just in case an extra set of legs is needed or if she needs gills to dive deep. Each and every time we see her just before she changes the young girl drains that flask. Witnesses have claimed the gloop has a striking resemblance to pea and ham soup. So from that first heroic effort the media, the neighborhood, everyone called her Soup-er Woman.

So now you can claim to know. Not the girl herself of course, but at least you can say you’ve heard the story, you know the origin. Now didn’t you say you needed a new watch? I have hundreds, all Rolexes, guaranteed.