I, like countless little boys and girls, wanted to be a superhero. A child’s sense of reality can easily allow for the possibility.
Going to my kindergarten, we used to pass a laboratory situated on the town’s major avenue. At the core of many of my favorite superheroes origin was a lab, or at least a lab mishap. I was convinced that I could get the scientists inside to provide me with a “super serum” to allow me the super powers that I already realized would never come naturally. It didn’t occured to me that if these scientists could make superpowers that they would fly to work themselves. I felt the same impulse I would get by driving past Dairy Queen. “Stop, Mom, stop there,” I wanted to plead. But I never did. My mom could never understand why I’d want want to devote my life to crime fighting, could she?
The ads in the back of comic book provided the possible ingredients. X ray vision glasses, tear gas guns, Anvil wrist band for super strength! But there was nothing to provide my most coveted superpower, flight. My love of Mountain Dew and sour cream and onion potato chips always kept my savings well below the $9.98 plus shipping and handling required the get the meager gadgets that my reality still believed could exist. They couldn’t say that the X-ray glasses work if they didn’t, could they? Ah precious youthful ignorance.
All those cape-clad dreams become corrupted by knowledge and self consciousness and that youthful energy becomes focused away from saving the world and more towards love and other self destructive activities.
In my dreams, though, I can fly. It varies from dream to dream, sometimes into power lines and sometimes it’s just jumping really high and sometimes Its only about 20 feet off the ground. But I don’t fight crime, I elude the marauding monsters that roam through my subconscious.
Goodbye, Stan Lee, hello Sigmund Freud!
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