It’s an early Saturday morning and I’m lying, belly down, on the carpet in front of the T.V. with a bowl of Frosted Flakes and milk in front of me. I’m waiting. As I take a bite of my yummy cereal, the title screen to the cartoon starts. Two bad guys break into a building and are able to blow it up. Then a long, mysterious, black car flies down the road; the hero is on his way. As the bad guys attempt to escape, the hero appears, and his name is Batman.
I jump up from my cereal bowl and pose like my favorite superhero on the screen. Wearing my gray and black pajamas with the batman symbol on the chest and the black cape held on to my shirt by Velcro, I am the Batman. The imaginary bad guys pull out guns to shoot me, but I throw my imaginary batarang and knock the guns out of their hands. They step back in pain, so I dive forward and tackle one of the bad guys into the couch. The second bad guy comes at me punching wildly, trying to catch me off guard. I duck a punch, and as I step forward to knock out the villain, I stomp down on the plastic cereal bowl, launching milk and frosted flakes all over the couch, floor and wall.
“Nathan! What were you doing!” screams my enraged older sister who allowed me to eat cereal in front of the T.V., even though I’m not supposed to. “I’m sorry, Sissy,” I start to explain, “I was being a hero, beating up the bad guys because I’m the Batman.” My older sister’s glare slowly turn into a smile followed by a giggle, “Okay, Batman, go get a towel and help me clean this up before Mom finds out.” I smile, but then remembering who I am, I frown and respond with a husky “okay.” As I march into the kitchen to find a towel, I know I would always love superheroes.
When I was 1, I was diagnosed with Severe Asthma, Stomach Reflux Disease and Sinusitis. The doctors and my parents were afraid that I might not be able to be a normal kid, and honestly, their fear became a cage. My outdoor, social, and active play was limited to prevent me from getting sick. So, I spent a lot of time indoors coloring, playing games, or watching TV. Besides Barney and Sesame Street, I watched superhero shows like Batman. The shows had characters that were strong, fearless, proud, heroic and most importantly not sick. It meant a lot to me to pretend to be the good guy, the hero, because often it didn’t feel like I could ever be a real hero. But characters like Batman gave me hope.
The Batman was just the seed, for there were many more heroes that came alive during my childhood, spent in the daycare my mom ran out of our home. Even with the social interactions with the other kids, most of the games I wanted to play placed me as a character from another one of my favorite shows, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Just like Batman, my imagination would run wild as I would become another hero. I was Raphael. I ran around the house in my Ninja Turtle costume, trying to defeat the evil girl squad who was going to kidnap me and make me be the dad in another boring game of house, where all I would get to do is drink coffee and eat donuts. But I wasn’t going to let the evil girl squad ever capture me. No, I, Raphael would defeat them. Often, however, I, Raphael, was defeated first by the evil villain Shredder, Mom. It was hard being a sick kid and a hero, but I always made it work.
It got easier to be a kid when my parents were able to send me to a private school. The school was on the National Jewish campus, and was made especially for kids with medical conditions; Asthma, Diabetes, hearing impaired and Sickle Cell Anemia. Here, as part of the downtrodden group, separated from the other kids for our own health, we were able to act like normal kids. But more than that, we could be heroes. Every Halloween we were told to wear our costumes to school for a full day of trick-or-treating in the hospital, and for three of those years I was a Power Ranger. The Power Rangers were much cooler than those turtles in a half shell, and it proved true when I showed up to school as the Red Ranger and a few more kids in the class were also ready to battle the evil forces of Rita Repulsa, Lord Zedd and Goldar. The energy and costumes pushed us to playing out many of the memorable battles once we made it to the playground. Being a Power Ranger was fantasy, but it allowed me to cope with my illness, because there was no escaping that.
Power Rangers had been a fantasy to escape to during the day, but there were other times I needed other heroes. On nights when I was sick and I was awake taking my nebulizer treatments, my mom and I would watch one of three shows that were usually on the Disney channel: Darkwing Duck, Talespin or Gargoyles. I was never really a fan of Gargoyles, it was always a little too scary for me, but Darkwing Duck and Baloo from Talespin with their comedic heroics would sweep me out of those dreadful treatments into exciting adventures of thwarting the villains and eating awesome treats.
Television wasn’t my only source of heroes during my rough childhood. There were movie heroes that I wanted to be, and often during play time in day care, I would become them. If I felt extremely sick and unable to do anything, I became Hercules. Being Hercules would help me muster up what little strength I had to walk up to dump trucks and toss them around like they were mere plastic. Or if I felt discouraged I would emulate my favorite street rat. As Aladdin, I would dash through the yard and playground avoiding the reckless and stupid guards, with the hopes of one day becoming a prince, or even finding the girl of my dreams, my Jasmine, and for a moment my day was amazing.
Like most children, however, I began to grow out of these childhood fantasies when I started middle school, only holding on to the few that would keep the bullies away. Even though I had switched back to public school in the 4th grade and knew many of the kids in my sixth grade classes from elementary school, it was hard to interact with others. I was shorter than almost everyone else, I wore baggy clothes too big to fit the little kid drowning inside of them, and I had glasses and a rolley backpack. If I had been a bully, I’m sure I would have picked on me, too. My humorous appearance and the fact that I missed 30 days of school each year made it hard to make friends. I was simply an outcast, and my escape became the heroes, if you could call them that, of the WWF. The mental motivation of the Rock, telling me to stand up to the bullies, and Stone Cold Steve Austin telling me to not to take shit from anybody pushed me through a few dark years in middle school. They weren’t the typical heroes, but much like their animated predecessors, they served the purpose of helping me. The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin became the tough voices in my head that pushed me to become someone else. I didn’t want to be sick anymore, so I quit taking my medicine. I didn’t want to be made fun of anymore, so I pressured my parents into buying me contacts, and new clothes that fit. When I started high school, I was someone new, someone who didn’t take crap from anyone, someone who didn’t let people push him around, someone who was mentally tough.
As I entered high school, few heroes stuck with me. However, I had found another world to escape to: the world of wizardry. The world of Harry Potter was a place I would escape to often in my mind to avoid the madness that was occurring in my family members around me. I started reading Harry Potter before I left middle school, but in high school, it became an escape from a very emotional reality. With my sister and my mom pregnant at the same time, hiding in the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was far more exciting. Harry and I would walk side by side through Hogwarts, run from Dementors and evil teachers and escape in to the room of requirement to train our friends in defensive magic. Even though I still regard Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as the most emotional and angsty book of the series, dealing with that emotional roller coaster was better than dealing with the double whammy of maternal hormones, because at least I could shut the book.
Standing alongside Harry Potter were Young Merlin, Maximum Ride, Robert Langdon, and Artemis Fowl as I was sucked into fiction. I found these protagonists mildly comforting, and again, following their adventures and pretending that I was either them or present with them allowed my escape. When I dove head first into a book there, was no telling how long it would be before I came back up for a breath, because too many problems in my life were at the surface. Along with books, heroes were emerging in my favorite American past time, videogames. I was Master Chief, Malak, or Sora. Whoever I needed to be, I would become. If I had a bad day of English classes, I as Master Chief would run through 10 levels just kicking some alien ass. However, on the days where I was slightly happier, and perhaps more lovesick, I would become Sora on the never ending quest to save his best friend Kairi. When I needed to, I found a videogame that fit my mood, with a hero that was my psychologist for the day.
These heroes led me through a lot of crap in my life to brighter days, though most of the time I was using them to act as an escape. These heroes were there for me, to take on their qualities and to get through things in my life, to be a hero. So we come to the end of my senior year of high school where my life was good and I was healthy. But there was still a reason to escape, I was bored, and I was going to college in a few months, I needed a hero.
My favorite thing to do in the summer besides going to the movies was driving down to the library and sitting in the young adult’s area looking for new adventures. One afternoon, I grabbed a few Teen Titans graphic novels off one of the shelves and over the next few hours finished the first three volumes. I checked out the last three and spent the next few hours at home reading the books. After I had effectively gotten lost in the stories of the Teen Titans, I wanted to know more about the young heroes, so I looked up the comic book on Wikipedia. After several days of reading Wikipedia articles about the superheroes, sidekicks, villains and team-ups of the DC universe, I finally climbed the stairs out of the bat cave that was my basement room, and went in search of the television series Smallville at the library. I was able to check out the first four seasons of Smallville, and I found a hero I could emulate in the young Clark Kent. Smallville wasn’t just a new perspective on the young life of Superman; it was another escape for me. The show portrayed Clark in high school, the time of discovery for a young man, trying to figure out hormones, love, friendship and purpose. Smallville portrayed what it would be like to be a superhero with extraordinary abilities in a society much like ours. Clark went through all the drama associated with high school, the drama of discovering all of his extraordinary abilities, and the added action and drama from his encounters with other people who, unlike him, used their powers for the benefit of the self. The struggles that Clark went through were truly no different from mine.
Through college, Smallville was the catalyst to more superhero investigations, often Wikipedia searches in the middle of classes on my tablet computer. My curiosity to learn more about the DC Universe grew like a hunger, and the more I read about the superheroes and their adventures, the more I wanted to know. I started to focus on two heroes whose stories I related to the most. There was Barry Allen, the Flash, who was a forensic scientist who liked to take things slow but didn’t have enough time for the important things in his life, until he got his powers. The second was Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, the man who was chosen to wield a power ring because he was capable of overcoming fear, but in the end lost himself to the fears he was unable to let go of. I found myself in these characters, always rushing from one thing to the next because I like to spend massive amounts of time on all activities. Also, I still can’t overcome my core fears, that I will never be healthy and that when I work hard for something it would have been for nothing.
My personal connection to these heroes led to my current obsession with comic books. Since this last summer, I have read over 400 comic books and I have gathered over 124 GB of digital comic books, placing my new digital collection in the thousands. With all these comic books, I have found more heroes and have on a deeper level learned more about myself. Lately, I have been acting no different than when I was a kid. Even though I’m 22, I love to put on my flash t-shirt and run up and down the hall of my fraternity house acting like my favorite crimson speedster, much to the annoyance of my fraternity brothers. They have gotten use to my random spontaneity and shrug off my insanity as a simple cry for attention. But really, when I wear my flash shirt, I try to remember to be patient with things that need time, hasty with things that do not and ultimately to have fun. I have many other comic book shirts each with its own personal meaning, and I always try to wear a shirt if I need a simple reminder.
Not unlike any other little boys, I loved superhero cartoons, and less unlike other little boys, I wanted to be a superhero. That was the goal when I was kid, to grow up and save the world, and in all honesty that goal hasn’t changed. The lessons that my childhood superheroes have taught me brought me to where I am now and made me the childish man that I am. I like this quote from Legend of the Five Rings, “we tell ourselves stories of superheroes, so that we remind ourselves that we too can be great.” Really, that’s why I’m passionate about heroes of all kinds, because not only do they remind us that we can be great but they remind us of something so much more important, that in life we all need help, and that any one of us can be a hero by helping others.
