When things got bad though, when I was afraid to go home or when I wandered neighborhoods far away because there wouldn't be any kids that knew me there, I always ended up in comic books. I prayed for a superpower. Something to make me special, even if it was a secret, that would elevate me above being taunted by other kids or being ridiculed and neglected by my family.
The Hulk was my favorite. I kept a lot of rage bottled up as a kid. What attracted me to the Hulk was the prospect of letting go, letting that rage loose with no regret or remorse. How gloriously freeing that would have felt, or so I thought at the time. I did let go a few times but, not living in the pages of a comic book, there were consequences. And those consequences made me bottle up the anger and rage even more.
This ended up following me into adulthood. Shocking. But by this time all the boxed up rage had fermented and compacted down to a deep and persistent sadness. No longer did I want to smash. I just wanted to disappear. I discovered old time radio shows and I would think how peaceful it would be to become The Shadow. To cloud men's minds and just disappear seemed like such a restful way to live.To steal a line from Stephen King, "the world moved on." The rage and the desire to disappear are gone, left in the rubble of the past along with the sad and angry man that I used to be. How surprising then to find, here in my 50th year, that I actually do have a superpower.
January 2nd, 2017:
I can't leap tall buildings in a single bound (but I did vault a rambunctious Schnauzer on my way to get a haircut this morning), I have no high-tech armored suit (but I have conditioned my body to take far more physical punishment than nearly everyone I know) and I can't shout, "Flame on!" and become a living pillar of fire (but I do try and approach life each day with the passion of a thousand suns.) I have come to understand that in real life superpowers are more subtle and nuanced. And, like manufacturing an adventure filled life, it's a matter of perception and acceptance.
I found all this out on January 2nd while donating blood. I started donating regularly not too long after I moved to San Diego. I used to date a Roller Derby girl and on a whim donated when a blood-mobile from the local blood bank was at one of their events. Two happy happy things occurred through the failure of our relationship. She went on to marry a man that makes her incredibly happy and they have an amazing little boy. And I went on to become a regular blood donor. I like to think that because of that relationship, somewhere, a life got saved. Or at the very least a number of people got helped on the way to recovering from their injuries.On this occasion at the end of my donation, when they were reading off my blood type and such, something different happened. After the usual medial esoterica the nurse said, "rare." I was surprised. I'm B+, not really a rare blood type. So I asked, "What was that bit about rare?"
It turns out that I have a comparatively rare blood antigen that can help certain people heal more quickly after a transfusion or if they are only compatible to blood with my special sauce. I won't be bringing tribbles or Captain Kirk back to life, but in another small and unique way I can help people.
I was thrilled. It was like finding out that the squirrel that bit me when I was in high-school really was radioactive, that I had secret squirrel powers all along and never knew it. It was something special and unique about myself that it took 50 years of life to discover. I felt that if something like that could reveal itself later in life, what other strange and mysterious things are going to unfold in my life before I get planted in a pine box.
It may not seem like much to you. But to the former hurt, angry and neglected kid that still sleeps in a dark corner of the tattered tennis shoe that is my soul, that's a f*cking superpower to be proud of and right now he's telling be to go out and buy a cape.
