Once upon a time, I was managing a retail store in Niles, Illinois.

It was a winter in the late 70s, I had just become legal-age and was on my own. After graduating high school, and with the least bit of encouragement, I ran off to Chicago to climb the ladder of management to that golden job at the end of every all-American rainbow.

On Christmas day, alone amidst a throng of noisy kids less than half my age, I sat – too cheap to even buy popcorn – in a mall multiplex and waited for enough quiet and darkness to part the big red velvet curtains and show me the movie Superman

. The advertising slogan for the flick was, “You’ll really believe a man can fly.

”

Looking at that movie now, having survived a stint in Hollywood myself, there’s not much believable about it. But, there in the darkness, with a couple hundred other awe-struck souls, I soared with Lois and the man of steel. The bad guys stuck out like majorettes at a funeral and it was easy to mop them up. From the top of The Daily Planet all the world’s wrongs were easy to spot and quick to correct. My long lost comic book hero was right there in the flesh and inspiring me to do good, alongside the police, the mayor and the newspapers. Heck, you could even look up to the President. Superman did.

I left that Chicago job after five promotions in a single year wondering, if I had done so well without a collegiate sheepskin, how much better could I do with one? Just for the record: I’ve never had a better paying job in my life. Sitting here now, in the middle of Kansas, staring point blank at the big five-Oh!, Superman is the least of my worries.

There’s a big, old house with more work left to do than has so far been done, there’s a yard full of half-baked projects that should, someday, be just beautiful. My biggest earning days are in the past, and my little, persistent aches remind me that none of us were designed to live much past forty. I’m now a titled landowner – which in some places means something. Of course the only title I have that anyone uses is “disabled veteran”. But, together with my “resident alien” wife of ten-plus years, we’re watching our nearly three-year-old son, who is a little smarter than he ought to be, try to figure out how bugs work without actually taking them apart.

Today, we applied for his first passport. We all waited in line at the little post office in our adopted hometown and watched workmen tear up the asphalt-over-brick street so that they can lay in a new one. We even grabbed a brick for ourselves – dated 1906.

As my child watched the diggers, my mind floated away on the warm summer breeze to all the ways my life would never be anything like a superhero’s. It floated past the gallery full of art I didn’t like, the ice-cream parlor I liked a little too well and up to where a worn Old-Glory fluttered above. It lingered near the pole and then lit on that scrap of cloth igniting more pondering. What would that pennant ever mean to him, or for that matter, what did it mean to me? Why had it never been as substantial as the one waving behind Clark Kent’s alter ego?

Coming to no answer, I drifted back to the reason for our visit and how the passport in my hand, worn from travel, had gotten me just about everywhere I’d ever wanted to go. I was never “faster than a speeding bullet” but I got around.

I worry sometimes about the world “junior” is getting, but more often, I wonder at the possibilities it will offer to a young man who will be smart enough to take good advantage of that alien situation. The idea of him, his friends, and we’ve just learned a little brother is on the way, buoy me up. Remind me the future is far from solid, and inform me that doors long closed sometimes open with just the slightest gust of hope. Every day brings new rays of sunshine – if your eyes are open and pointed in the right direction.

I’m probably just not a good candidate for immortality, phenomenal strength or x-ray vision. I’d mess up. I’d break things. I’d boil someone’s brains by trying to see past them in a theater. I’d end up stymied into inaction by having lived through too much history and knowing how often good intentions have truly foul results. So I shed a silent tear when Lois Lane died in the movie – not for her, or even for his loss. I knew, I just knew, that whatever he did after that was going to be heartbreaking. Having sat through the next installment of that franchise, I guess I should have been grieving for myself and all the great dramatic potentials that were missed or mutilated there – but that’s just the way it goes with Hollywood. I never really fit there either. Not quite "super" enough. I guess I’m just not suited owning a cape or having to wear red underpants on the outside.

Nope – I can’t say I ever really believed in Superman. He’s a great idea but his life is one I just could not live. I couldn’t do the things he’d have to do – that go way beyond super-powers. You’d have to be made more of stone than steel. Alone. Impenetrable. Unchanging.

I go from self-aggrandizing to self-loathing within the same sentence. So, even far from Hollywood, I'm still not very super - and never will be. But I have to admit that standing here in line, with the wind blowing my thinning hair and the flag flapping behind me, with my newly pregnant wife and my little boy’s hand in mine, I do, once again, believe – that a man can fly.

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Text: @ 2011 NBC
Publication Date: 12-08-2011

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