“Just What Kind of Radioactive Animal Does a Guy Like Me Need to Get Bitten By?”
I recently received official confirmation that I have superpowers.
This was pretty gratifying - not to say unexpected – if only because it fulfilled a deeply cherished childhood dream. While other kids dreamed of playing shortstop for the Red Sox or driving in a demolition derby, I dreamed of scaling walls and using taxicabs as flyswatters. Never mind that I was an extremely pudgy and awkward child and that if I ever did become a superhero, I’d have looked pretty silly – shave Winnie the Pooh down and slap a cape on him and you’d have a pretty good image of what I’d look like – I knew what I wanted to be. Nobody could tell me that I wasn’t going to be a great superhero someday.
So I have to admit to feeling a certain degree of vindication a month or so ago when my insurance company tacitly admitted that I possess superhuman powers.
Our well was struck by lightning. I had been under the impression that this happens fairly frequently, but apparently I was mistaken, because our insurance company paid our claim, then promptly canceled our policy. They were able to do this because we live in New Hampshire, where insurance companies are allowed to drop you like a greased baby after one claim.
My wife tends to take things personally. Whereas you or I might take rising gasoline prices as a petty annoyance, my wife - who in other areas of her life maintains an almost zen-like air of serenity – views it as a conspiracy against her individually. (It hasn’t been a great Spring for her all around.) Needless to say, she had strong feelings about our insurance company. “Inbred, tapeworm poopheads” was the kindest thing she had to say about them.
I, on the other hand, was a bit flattered. The insurance company, I theorized, would not have canceled our policy if we had not been remiss in some way. Obviously, they felt that I had been careless with my ability to call lightning from Heaven and were worried that I might continue to do so in the future. (If so, this certainly shows a lot of courage on their part, because I would think that someone with that ability would be the last person you would want mad at you.)
I explained this theory to my wife, who responded by rolling her eyes – something she does rather a lot.
So, while my wife went to give the Maine Mutual Insurance Corporation a piece of her mind (God help them!), I felt well qualified to start work on our new nursery. Fighting actual crime was probably still a bit beyond me, but I was pretty sure that a superhero with my eerie abilities could handle putting down a hardwood floor.
“Ah ha!” I shouted as I burst through the door, toolbox in my hand. “Bow down before me and tremble before the awesome power of Flooring Man!”
[This is something I have a tendency to do, by the way, even without corporate endorsement. Catching three green lights in a row turns me into Driving Man and starting the lawn mower on the first pull leads to a heroic diatribe that makes my wife roll her eyes until they almost come back around from the bottom. I fully expect that after a few years of this kind of intensive exercise, she will develop superpowers of her own. Cornea Girl, the tabloids will call her, as she zips from crime to crime with sidekick, Iris the Wonder Owl, lifting buildings with her bare eyeballs. But I digress…]
“So!” I said, pointing at the spectacularly unattractive flooring already in place, “Linoleum, my old foe – prepare to meet your… um…er… Well, just be prepared to meet it!”
It might be my imagination, but it seemed as if the floor trembled just a bit.
“Take that!” I said, as I rolled out the Rosin Paper of Destiny as a sort of opening sortie. “That should neutralize some of your evil powers!”
I kept this kind of monologue up for a surprisingly long time – a little more than 12 hours: long enough to put the Floorboards of Righteousness across the entire length of the room and nail them in with the Mystic Floor Nailer of Justice. I felt a little hot and lightheaded from time to time, but I chalked that up to desperate ploys on the part of my mystic enemy.
Hubris has brought down bigger superheroes than myself and I can only blame my own overweening sense of pride for letting my defenses down long enough for my enemy to strike a blow at me. (Or I got tired and ran my finger through the table saw; it depends on your perspective.)
The next day, as my doctor worked on my finger, she asked if I knew that I had a temperature of 101 degrees. Damn him – Linoleum Man was more powerful than I had suspected.
Two days in bed, watching daytime television was enough to fill me with enough of a sense of self-righteousness and vigilantism to attack the nursery once more.
“You’ve fought bravely and well, my old foe,” I told the floor with some regret that our battle was coming to an end, “but it is time for me to seal you away under the Bamboo Floor of Democracy, where you can do no harm.” I bent over to pick up the floorboard I had dropped three nights before – the very last floorboard – and promptly threw my back out.
Two more days on my back watching Trading Spaces left me weak and almost delirious. “Damn… you… Linoleum,” I gasped. “Damn… you… all… to… Hell…”
It was as I lay in bed that night, watching television with my wife that the final blow was struck. In my own defense, I have to say that I was still feverish and loopy from back pain. I also want to point out that the particular show we were watching was funny. Really funny. Supernaturally funny, now that I look back on it.
In any case, something funny and unexpected happened on screen and I laughed explosively, then responded … unexpectedly. I did something I had not done in many years – indeed, since the age of five, when my father decided not to take me on long car trips anymore, or if he did, to not let me eat prunes.
You know – something unexpected.
My wife looked at me. I looked at her.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been filled with shame and humiliation. After a week like I’d just had, I just sighed and shrugged.
My wife thought for a moment, then neatly summed up the situation in seven words.
“You’re really not much of a superhero.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied.
I lay there for a moment or two more in stinky contemplation before adding, “On the other hand, the insurance company thinks I am.”
“If they could only see you now,” my wife said with a sigh.
“What should I do,” I asked, “send them a pair of pajama bottoms full of feces?”
My wife admitted that this was the best idea I’d had in a very long time.
