I did not live in a house with air conditioning until I was in my thirties. The closest thing to relief from the hot, muggy Midwest days was the box fan my dad put in a downstairs window. We would crowd around the fan, hoping to experience a cool breeze that would stem the sweltering discomfort. Not a chance. My dad had it blowing out instead of in, to “vent” the house. I can hear all those engineers shouting that it is a viable way of helping cool a structure. My formal training may be for telling the difference between a da Vinci and Michelangelo (Fine arts degree, very helpful if you happen to be walking through a European gallery), and not home cooling, but I do realize that venting can be effective if you have a large enough fan. A tiny box fan is only good for blowing air directly on children melting from the summer heat.
The one way my dad would cool us off on a hot summer’s day was to give us all a quarter and send us down to the local movie theater for a Saturday morning of the Three Stooges, Gene Autry, and the free air conditioning. The sign outside the theater we were in, and almost every movie establishment at the time, said “Air Cooled.” What better way to cool off the kids and have someone else keep an eye on them? Yeah, if someone did the same today with a group of kids from 5 to 10 years old, it might be considered child endangerment. Sending your kids on their own to a theater a mile or two from home, relying on the oldest to make sure none of the kids were kidnapped or murdered, might be considered a little sketchy. We also rode in cars without seat belts while our parents were smoking “heaters” in the front seat, and we all did ok…except for two or three of us, but there is no direct proof that it caused us any harm…but I digress.
Why am I rambling on about these distant memories? (See, I still have an almost completely intact brain… what were we talking about?) Oh, yeah. My wife and I decided to head to the movies recently. Why, you ask? Since it’s been close to 100 degrees at our home lately, we decided to give our electric bill a break. I performed some calculations to determine how the cost of a movie could save us thousands of dollars in cooling bills over the long run. Don’t believe me, come on over to the house and check out the blackboard with the complicated equation in full display. My wife said it looks more like a recipe for pasta carbonara.
Back to the point. What we saw were the two big superhero pictures of the summer, Superman and The Fantastic Four. While it was fun to see both pictures, I would not call them great. Superman seemed to wander all over the place, and the Fantastic Four was dated, and I mean The Jetsons dated. What they both had in common, like all superhero movies, was that by the end of the movie, the cities where the story takes place were left in rubble. While they were saving the world, they were destroying the world. Does that make sense? I’ve seen less destruction in pictures of cities bombed during WWII. What seems odd is how happy the city’s residents are once the villains are vanquished, even though the buildings where they lived and worked are left in a pile of broken concrete and bent steel. Hordes of bystanders cheered, patted each other on the back, and applauded the superhero for prevailing over the alien threat. Not a single one of them headed towards the rubble to try and help dig out their fellow citizens who may have been trapped in the collapse of all those buildings. I hope those specially gifted heroes will help clean up the mess they made. Didn’t their moms teach them to pick up after themselves?
Who hasn’t daydreamed about having super-powers? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could fly, have the strength to lift a car, or be faster than light? As for Bruce Wayne, aka Batman, when asked by someone what his superpower was, he responded, being rich. Having wads of cash made it easy for him to build a cave under his mansion, create all kinds of crime-fighting toys, then sulk around the city he’s supposed to protect and beat up anyone who crossed him.…oh, yeah, and fight crime. All he had to do was find criminals who had done worse things than he had.
This world is full of children and young adults who love superhero stories. Who hasn’t dressed up like Batman to trick-or-treat, hung upside down from a tree branch pretending to be Spiderman, or gone to a costume party dressed as Wonder Woman in hopes of getting lucky? Maybe I did two of these things, just which ones? Your guess.
How about all the pediatric hospital beds filled, during the 1950s, with kids who wrapped a red blanket around their neck, pretending to be like Superman from the television show, and jumping off the garage roof to see if they could fly. All those with plates and screws in their lower body, raise your hands.
Those youthful dreams are now gone for one simple reason… can you imagine bodies of folks our age stuffed into a spandex superhero costume? I believe most states have decency laws preventing such disgusting displays. I think I just gave away the age demographic of those who read this blog. Expect even more ads from pharmaceutical companies trying to sell you the newest miracle drug that promises to cure everything, while also helping you lose weight.
If I want to be a superhero now, I would have to change my expectations. I don’t have the muscle mass to fill out a proper Spandex costume. Maybe I need to reconsider my superhero future and become a crime-fighter similar to the Green Lantern or the Shadow. The only requirement is a suit, with breathing room to hide all the rolls of flab on my body, and a classy-looking fedora. I would also have a young sidekick who would do the heavy lifting. At my age, I might break a hip. I could call him Kato, (My wife just informed me the name has been used. Ok, how about Phil…exotic enough?).
My secret identity is safe because I will be wearing a small black mask with eye holes. Hey, if Clark Kent could get away with just wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a black mask, left over from one of my kids’ old Halloween costumes will work. I need to replace the elastic band because it keeps breaking.
What would my superpower be? It has to be my cutting wit. I would take the villain down with a sly but devastating dig. Imagine me as a superhero facing down Thanos right before he snaps his fingers to delete half the population on Earth. I would say something like, “Hey, rut face, did your dermatologist run out of Botox®?”
At that point, he would stop in horror at the realization of his hideous appearance, drop his glove containing the powerful stones, and sulk back to his universe, or planet, or wherever someone like that came from, thoroughly defeated. I would have saved the day, not to mention receiving a three-picture, sequel deal from Marvel Studios.
Have to go, my wife reminded me that my superpowers are reaching for things on the top shelves, lifting heavy objects for her (luggage), and taking out the trash. All I need now is a secret lair. Let me see if I can find some free space in the garage.
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