As the fictional man of steel, Superman swore to protect the weak and the innocent. If I were Superman, I would swear at the weak, the innocent, and anyone else who happened to get in my way. My days would be spent walking around town, taunting and laughing at people, mocking them for how they couldn’t do anything to stop me from tormenting them. “Hey, I’m Superman. Why don’t you just come over here and make me?” is what I would say, and then I would crush them with a building, or a really big boat that I pulled out of the ocean. They would cry and I would laugh at them in my loud Superman voice. “Ouch, Superman, your laughing is hurting my ears and making my suffering worse. Please stop!” But, I wouldn’t stop. I would just keep right on laughing and giving them cancer with my x-ray vision. Yes, the universe certainly knew what it was doing when it decided to prevent me from being Superman.
When I was a kid, I never wanted to grow up. The adults that I knew had nothing but responsibilities and never did anything fun. I didn’t see them driving bikes, or playing in the mud, and they never just hung out with friends at the playground. Nope, growing up was not going to be for me and I was going to resist the process as much as I possibly could. Then one day, being able to drive a car, vote, and drink liquor all seemed like things that were worth growing up for. I can’t exactly recall how the idea of driving drunk to the polling station changed my life, but it just did.
So, I then began to imagine myself as a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis or that swan-goose thing of H. C. Andersen, transforming into some sort of tower of intellect and bulwark of quiet dignified repose. In my head, I constructed a picture of myself as future-me, stroking my beard and clucking my tongue while I engaged thoughtfully in contemplative conversations on Math, Science, and the nature of the deliciousness of three cheese ranch salad dressing.
Yeah, I’m still waiting for all that to happen. It turns out that the mess you are when you’re six is the mess you’ll be when you’re sixty. Still, I’d rather have my motorcycle now than the bicycle I had when I was eight. Life is wasted on the living.
Inside Doug's Head 