One of my children, whom I’m supposed to be watching, will get hurt.

Specifically, my one-year-old son will get hurt, then glare at me and say, “Well, seems like ‘Super Dad’ over here was a little too busy trying to solve today’s mini crossword to pay attention to his children,” and I will be so devastated by this burn that I’ll fail to appreciate his hyper-advanced vocabulary.

Someone will realize the coffee is mostly gin.

A supervillain will come to town and start blasting people with his shrink ray, prompting the townsfolk to frantically ask if I can save them, given that I am drinking from a mug that indicates I am a superhero. I will be forced to admit that my Super Dad powers don’t actually include anything that might stop a shrink ray but are, rather, limited to making funny noises that can occasionally get one of my kids to stop crying.

Literally any mom will see me.

Barack Obama’s car will break down outside of my house. He will come in to use our phone, look at the mug, chuckle wryly, and say, “Yeah, I had to deal with a few work-life-balance issues while I was raising my kids, too,” and I will feel smaller than I have ever felt before.

The panicked townsfolk will ask if I can at least make one of those funny noises so they can enjoy the sound of children’s laughter while being shrunk. I will do so, and my children will react with uninterested silence.

My own dad will stop by and pointedly ask why I never got one of those mugs for him.

I will realize that, for whatever reason, coffee just tastes a lot better when I drink it out of my “I Am So Happy That I Am Going to Be Young and Childless Forever” mug, which I bought on the Jersey shore during that magical, carefree summer of 2011.

I will bump into another dad with the same mug, and we will be forced to fight to the death to determine which of us is the one, true Super Dad, as is tradition.

An actual superhero will finally show up to defeat the supervillain and restore everyone to their normal sizes. He will ask for nothing more than an invigorating cup of coffee in exchange for his noble deeds. Everyone will look at me expectantly, and I will have to sheepishly acknowledge that I just finished the last of the pot myself.

My daughter will try to talk to me about a problem she’s having at school, but I will say, “Not now, honey. I’m too busy admiring the craftsmanship of my ‘Super Dad’ mug.” By the time I realize the irony of the situation, our relationship will already be damaged beyond repair.

I will lose track of time and suddenly realize that I just accidentally let my children watch who knows what on YouTube for the past fourteen hours.

I will strike up a quiet conversation with the defeated supervillain while the rest of the town is celebrating at a victory party we were not invited to. He will confess that the only reason he became a supervillain in the first place was to get his kids to respect him. I will try to make him feel better by giving him my “Super Dad” mug. He will say thank you, then immediately throw the mug at the superhero, giving him a black eye. He will blame me and run away.

The coffee will be too hot, and I will burn my mouth on it—which will be, you know, really annoying. Those burns take forever to heal. ♦