Saturday, December 19, 2009

Bathroom Monologue: Tug on that Cape

The best part of being a superhero happened Saturday morning. He wished he didn’t feel that way, but it was true.

On Tuesday he caught a train as it was derailing. A couple of people broke their arms. There were no fatalities. He signed more autographs for the stranded commuters than there were bruises.

On Wednesday he airlifted an iceberg to the southern Sahara. The governments assured him this would help irrigation, or at least give the locals clean drinking water for a few weeks.

He spent Thursday and Friday traveling through space to correct the trajectory of two satellites headed out of the solar system. It would have been lifetimes to build and send new ones, but now all that work was saved and new photos were beamed to earth, showing the cosmos from an angle never before seen. He took a minute to look from that angle himself, in person, before heading back to earth.

The best part was Saturday morning and he couldn’t help himself. He woke up and his costume was missing from the clothesline. His wife was still asleep, facedown on her pillow and snoring happily.

He padded to the living room and found his cape stretched over two chairbacks, forming a tent. His one son wore the pants of his costume like giant sleeves, and his one daughter wore the shirt like a flowing dress that ran over her little feet. She was drooling on his insignia. They were both transfixed with morning cartoons.

Maybe, if he were more profound, some other time of the week would have been the best. He wasn’t, though.

4 comments:

  1. Can I nick this idea? I love 'reality vs fantasy' themes. Reality is always funnier.

    Rachel xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you'd like to mess around with it for #fridayflash or something short, go ahead. I'd appreciate a link to my post, if you don't mind, but aside from that I'd be happy to 'lend' the idea. Thank you for asking!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Will always credit in the unlikely event that I get something published! Thanks, just want to take the idea and run with it.
    eg
    **Superhero nearly fails to rescue falling plane because he was up all previous night with teething toddler.
    **Superhero caught with baby vomit on shoulder.
    **Superhero saves village from flood by stuffing leak in dam with cuddly toy.

    You get the idea...
    Rachel xx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi John. I like the story. It's hard to keep the sense of wonder with anything that you do every day (writing aside :P).

    I followed the link on 'Maybe' but as far as I can tell the story is identical. Have I missed something or am I just being super dense?

    ReplyDelete

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