When I was 19 years old, I was in a terrible car wreck. Not terrible in the sense that I was
injured. In fact, I walked away
with only a dislocated thumb and a small cut above my left eye. The accident was terrible because the
car was destroyed. I struck a
total of seven trees and a concrete drainage ditch before the car came to
rest. Everyone was amazed that I
walked away at all, much less with so few injuries. It was at that moment that I realized a truth that shaped my
foreseeable future:
I’m immortal.
Okay, maybe not immortal. Just invincible.
I’m talking Bruce Willis Invincible.
I guess everyone thinks that when they’re young. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve
started to realize that maybe (and, realize I mean only JUST maybe) I may not
actually be immortal. I now
approach the fun activities of my youth – bungee jumping and whitewater rafting
– with the realization that I have grown surprisingly fond of my limbs and I’m
not entirely sure I’m ready to part with them.
This mortal sensibility recently crept into my writing. I wrote “Card Tricks” about a superhero
that truly wasn’t; a man who didn’t want the powers he had, nor were they the
powers he would have chosen if given a choice.
Everyone thinks about getting superpowers when they’re
young. Everyone wants to be Batman
(minus the murdered parents) or Superman (minus the dead parents) or Spiderman
(minus the dead parents and murdered uncle). When confronted with the question of what power they’d have
if given the choice, they say “I want to fly” or “I want to be invincible” or “I’m
Batman”.
The mortal sensibility in me, however, starts evaluating how
truly effective those powers would really be. It would be great to fly faster than the speed of sound, but
unless your power also gave you skin that can handle the wind sheer, you’d wind
up as little more than a red mist the second your broke the sound barrier. Don’t even get me started on how hard
it would breathe when wind is driving into your face at 800 miles per hour.
These crazy thoughts are actually driving a future novel of
mine, which will examine just how much life sucks when you become a
superhero. If you want to see
where it all starts, go read “Card Tricks”.
Until then, I think people should analyze more closely their
superpower wishes. When asked what
superpowers you want, be sensible.
Just stick with being Batman.
