The Day I Quit Being a Superhero
Dave Pacheco
I must apologize for my absence from the group in the past few weeks.
You see, at the beginning of March I was bitten by a Van Kuiper belt of
radioactive alien asteroids from the 4th dimension while traveling
through an Oort cloud of mysterious space gases when I suddenly
realized that I had been given the power of flight by an Elder tribe of
Earth watchers who have guided the affairs of Man for centuries. I was
all like, łDude, this is awesome!˛ and they were like łI know!˛ and I
was all łDude, muchas gracias, man!˛ and they were all łWith this great
gift comes great responsibility towards blah blah blah˛ and some other
stuff I canąt remember.
But the Eldest Elder took me aside after the special presentation
ceremony and imparted some great wisdom. I will never forget the lesson
he gave me that day as‹white-haired and full of Elderly wisdom--he
turned to me and said łNeverŠ˛
No, wait, it was: łAlwaysŠ something something, but not for evil.˛
Something like that.
Sorry, I was a little distracted by the presentation ceremony. The
Elders were apparently giving out super powers to all kinds of
creatures from all over the galaxy, and it was in this huge hall with
really bad acoustics. Especially where I was sitting, way in the back
behind the Newt-Ziglars from Beta Carotene (power: proportional
ant-strength, weakness: potato salad), the Giant Rhododendronites from
Reticular Spigmosis-7 (power: read minds, weakness: Laura Schlessinger)
and the Slime Puddlarians from Xenophobia-Centauri (power: speech,
weakness: Tom Clancy novels).
Then they cleared out the chairs and slime containers and the band came
out and we danced for a while, but it was a cash bar and I didnąt have
my wallet with me. Since I was supposed to be on a super-secret space
mission I didnąt even have an ID on me to prove I was over 21,000,037
space-time units, which is probably all for the best because the drinks
were really expensive (if I have my dollars to testicularions
conversion rate right. Plus, you really donąt want to handle those
coins for too long.).
So I went back to my space hotel and laid down in the regeneration
chamber for a while, but I couldnąt sleep from all the excitement. I
tossed and turned in the yellow gen-fluid for about an hour until I
realized that I hadnąt even tried out my super power. For all I knew
this was just a massive gyp, and tomorrow theyąd come over and try and
sell me real estate in some dark-matter backwater swamp of noxious base
elements where a sun hasnąt even coalesced out of the hydrogen haze
yet.
So I stepped out of my room and onto the balcony, looking over the
pool. I remember it like it was yesterday: the water looked cool and
inviting, the tiny waves reflecting one of the seven moons that circled
this tiny planet every three minutes. It made me dizzy to look down,
so I looked straight out, the same way I was told to do when I
bungee-jumped for the first time. I climbed up onto the balcony
railing, took a deep breath, and stepped off.
The feeling of flight was exhilarating, when I finally figured out how
to do it right, and my broken leg hardly encumbered me at all. When I
came to after the fall, the Elders explained that my superpower had a
special plastic tag that had to be removed before use, hadnąt I
listened to their explanations, blah blah with great powers comes great
responsibilities yadda yadda, and after I removed the tag and some
warning label it was attached to I could fly just fine.
They also asked my why I had been sleeping in the bidet in the hotel
when there was a perfectly good bed in the next room. You know, people
who are all-knowing sometimes just come across as plain łall-nosy˛.
The next morning I was hobbling into my space ship for the journey
home, when I thought to myself, łHey, I can fly! I donąt need this
stupid space ship!˛ So I threw down my levitation crutches up and away
I flew, a rocket towards the stars, streaking across the sky like a
meteorite as my clothes and body hair caught fire.
In the Burn Ward at the space hospital, only one of the Elders came
back this time with the spiel about reading the user manual, but man!
I was so hopped up on EctoMorphine I giggled all the way through the
speech, and then (according to witnesses) tried to jab a scalpel into
one of the Elderąs half-dozen eyes because I said it was (and I quote
witness testimony) łtrying to eat me.˛
They finally released me a couple of days later, and I waved a final
goodbye to this planet and took off in my space ship, a purloined crate
of EctoMorphine placed snugly inside the cockpit under the plate where
the space coordinate tracker used to be before I exchanged it for the
drugs to some jittery nurseąs aide who looked like a bat in a blender
and who had a name that could only be pronounced by dropping a
drawerful of cutlery down a garbage disposal.
Iąll skip over the weird things that happened when I accidentally
landed on Earth Prime (thanks to a missing coordinate tracker), because
you probably wouldnąt believe me, but holy cow, youąd think those
people had never seen a tiny little rip in the fabric of the space-time
continuum before. Touchy, touchy.
So I landed back here on łEarth sub-Prime˛ as the Earth Primers call
it, and thought it might be a good idea to become a superhero or
something. You know, just in case the Elders were watching, as they
had for millennia. So I made this suit out of pancakes and
subscription inserts from łWired˛ and łNewsweek˛, and gave myself a
superhero identity: I would be TimeMan! Quake in fear, evildoers!
Yes, I realize now in hindsight that the name was confusing, but I was
thinking about that whole łTime flies like an arrow˛ maxim that I read
on a fortune cookie one time I was rooting through a garbage can in
Chinatown, looking for blacklight portraits of Mao Tse-Tung. You see,
łtime flies.˛ Like an arrow. Hence, TimeMan.
Because I can fly.
Like time, you see. Time flies, TimeMan flies.
Thatąs OK, nobody else got it, either. So I spent most of my time
explaining what the name was all about, and by the time I had finished
the emergency was usually over.
łSo can you turn back time and stop the fire before it started,
TimeMan?˛
łNo, you see... time flies, like an arrow. I can fly.˛
łCan you fly so fast that you make the Earth rotate in the opposite
direction, and then time will flow backwards like in that Superman
movie?˛
łNo, thatąs impossible.˛
łA Superman movie? Dude, that was too possible! It had Christopher
Reeve in it!˛
łNo, the concept of reversing time by making the Earth reverse its
rotation. Itąs impossible.˛
łSo how do you make time go backwards?˛
łI canąt, I just told you.˛
łSo what power do you have over time?˛
łIąm TimeMan. TimeMan flies. Like an arrow.˛
łReally? ŚCause personally, I feel like time is dragging to a stop
here, just talking to you.˛
łListen, do you need me to fly anywhere or not?˛
łNah, thatąs OK, Mr. TimeMan with no freakiną power over time. Fireąs
gone out by itself.˛
So I had to change the name to something more immediately descriptive,
something that wouldnąt lead to an uncomfortable line of questioning as
I was trying to save a person from a burning building. I became: The
Man On Whom Gravity has Little Effect. MOWGLE, for short.
łMowgle? Werenąt you in that Jungle Book movie? Are you and Bagheera
going to put the fire out?˛
łWerenąt you at the last burning building?˛
In the end I just changed the letter on the chest of the suit to a
question mark, and accepted the fact that I would have to explain
myself wherever I went.
łQuestion Mark Man? What are you, the Unitarian Church superhero?˛
łIs it just a coincidence that you just show up at all of these
emergencies, or are you following me?˛
The days went by, and I was kind of enjoying myself being a superhero,
having a secret identity. I was even starting to set up my own Fortress
of Solitude in the living room using the cushions from the sofa, when I
started to notice that I wasnąt really getting much respect from the
people I was trying to save. I mean, people seemed to be initially
happy when I showed up at the scene of an emergency, but then it was
nothing but łSave her, Question Mark Man! Use your super strength to
lift up the bread truck that is crushing that beautiful reporterąs
leg!˛, łQuestion Mark Man! The bomb planted by the evil terrorist
Count Dante is about to detonate! Use your X-Ray vision to see which
of these three colored wires we have to cut!˛, łQuestion Mark Man! Our
only hope for saving our orphanage from foreclosure is if you crush
this carbon into a perfectly cut diamond!˛
At first my only thought was how oddly expositional the requests were,
but then I noticed how many times I was explaining to people that super
strength, X-Ray vision and freezing the guns in evildoers hands using
super-chilled breath were out of my range. That led to noticing how
disappointed they became as I explained that I could only assist if the
emergency could be resolved specifically through the ability to fly.
Plus, I couldnąt even fly if I were loaded down with anything over half
my body weight, so saving people from burning buildings and the like
was way out. Just straight flying. Point A to Point B, hopefully with
a tail wind.
As it turned out, there werenąt many emergency situations in which I
could really provide any heroic assistance. Usually Iąd get shouldered
out of the way by the police or the firemen as the showed up on the
scene. Oh, they were polite at first, understanding perhaps that I was
there to help, but lately they were treating me just like any other
civilian, and I had to stand behind the barricades with everyone else.
Pretty soon I even stopped wearing the costume. So many of the
subscription inserts had already been torn off by the claws of
ungrateful rescued cats that had become my only source of superhero
income, I was looking a bit ragged every time I wore it anyway.
I stopped trying to be a superhero when the taunting began. I knew when
I wasnąt wanted. I will not respond here to the jeering comments,
because to do so would be beneath me, but let me just say (for the
ladies), that my lack of super powers has nothing to do with my
virility.
So Iąm back to being just a regular guy. Some people ask me about it
now and then, but I respond by saying that flying was just a phase I
was going through, something I needed to get out of my system. This
explanation never satisfies anyone, so I had to make up some story
about how the chemical composition of the sun had changed, or that I
was bitten by a radioactive spider whose isotopes were oppositely
charged by gamma rays administered by my evil nemesis in his
underground laboratory.
łWhat was his name?˛
łWhat?˛
łYour nemesis. What was his name?˛
łUmmm. Arch... Enemy. Man.˛
łSuuuuure, Question Time Man.˛
łPlease donąt call me that. And stop following me.˛
- David Pacheco
figmentality
Dave Pacheco <dpac...@iname.com> wrote:
>No, wait, it was: ³AlwaysŠ something something, but not for evil.²
Damn your smart quotes, you brigand!
rone
--
Constancy of the speed of light is a conclusion, yes it is a conclusion based
on nonconvincing, irrational assumptions. WHAT IS LIGHT?! Whose light? From
what sourse? Please do not mention electronagnetics - the same applies to them.
- Alexander Abian <ab...@iastate.edu>
Ben Wolfson
>Sorry, I was a little distracted by the presentation ceremony. The
>Elders were apparently giving out super powers to all kinds of
>creatures from all over the galaxy, and it was in this huge hall with
>really bad acoustics. Especially where I was sitting, way in the back
>behind the Newt-Ziglars from Beta Carotene (power: proportional
>ant-strength, weakness: potato salad), the Giant Rhododendronites from
>Reticular Spigmosis-7 (power: read minds, weakness: Laura Schlessinger)
>and the Slime Puddlarians from Xenophobia-Centauri (power: speech,
>weakness: Tom Clancy novels).
John Ashcroft has the power to give people gonorrhea by clapping.
--
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler
You're going to set me up as a kind of slovenly attached pig that
Jack Kornfeld can slice down in his violent zen compassion?
-- Larry Block
figmentality
Ben Wolfson <rumju...@cryptarchy.org> wrote:
>John Ashcroft has the power to give people gonorrhea by clapping.
... with one hand.
Paula
> They also asked my why I had been sleeping in the bidet in the hotel
> when there was a perfectly good bed in the next room. You know, people
> who are all-knowing sometimes just come across as plain "all-nosy".
Do you realize you can kill people with stuff like this? I only barely
was able to breathe again in time to avoid my poor children being raised
by my ex-husband. AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ALL YOUR FAULT!! Please,
think of the children, like a good superhero should!
--
Paula
My lines are too short to netbox with Kibo.