Hanging Upside Down

It was mid September when I saw Superman. Red boots, blue tights, big ‘S’ on his chest, he raced across the playground yelling, “I’m here to save planet Earth.”

Three days later Wonder Woman soared on the swing. I was one of only two male elementary school teachers in our district. The other stood beside me, cringing. “You’d better shut that down. She’s going to jump…her leg braces…” 

He started forward; I grabbed his arm. A broken rib, a broken leg, both will heal. Never letting go, never feeling the cold rush of autumn hit your face, never jumping, that’s when you don’t heal, when you never. 

Yup, she jumped, and she crashed, crumpling on legs that couldn’t take the impact. Again, I restrained my colleague. “She didn’t cry out,” I said.

He jerked himself free, cussing, rushing toward her, stopping only when she scrambled awkwardly to her feet. “Did you see me, Mr. Wage? Did you see me?”

“Awesome,” I yelled back. “You were flying. You must have an invisible plane.”

By week’s end every child in my second grade class was in costume. Halloween had come early. I suspected the children were violating a dozen school rules, but I wasn’t the clothes police. Another man might have asked why no one else questioned the costumes. It never occurred to me that no one else saw them.

*

As autumn painted the trees, the children painted my world with their bright laughter and their bold ideas. They were the best of humanity, their dreams undiminished by life’s jeering naysayers. Morning after morning I jumped out of bed, eager for the next great adventure. 

“Can I bring my goldfish to school?” Beast Boy asked.

“Yes.” 

“What about my tarantula?”

“Only if it’s in a container with a lid.”

“My cobra?”

“No.” I made a mental note to google ‘emergency procedures for cobra bites.’ Beast Boy had a tendency to follow his instincts instead of my instructions. 

I’d arranged the children’s desks in five rows of four. Across the room Flash couldn’t stand still. His mother had warned me about his ADHD. 

“His first grade teacher said I should put him on Ritalin.”

“Perhaps I can help him learn to control himself without medication.”

“Are you sure? Last year…,” she wrung her hands, “…my son got in trouble everyday. He hated school.”

Now Flash ran, up and down the aisles, tapping each desk as he passed, his speed increasing. Tap…Tap…Tap Tap Tap Tap TapTapTapTapTap.

“Faster, Faster, Faster,” the class chanted.

I took out my stop watch and stepped in front of the blur. Flash collided my chest. 

Damn, did I knock the kid out? 

Dazed, he looked up at me with a goofy grin. Suddenly, the grin disappeared. Fear and embarrassment brought his head down. 

“Let’s see how fast you can run,” I said. 

“Really?” The hope in his eyes had me hating his first grade teacher.

I knelt beside the kid, “Speed is a gift. I want you to run up and down the hallway fifty times.”

“Fifty?” His eyes were wide.

“Fifty,” I said, handing him the stop watch. “Time yourself. I want to know how long it takes you to complete all fifty laps. Each day we’ll record your time. At the end of the week we’ll make a graph. That way we can see if you’re improving.”

The fear and embarrassment returned. “I don’t know how to make a graph.”

“Don’t worry. That’s what we’re learning this week in math.” I gave him my stop watch. “Remember, fifty times.”

*

October first brought frost. Arriving early, I stopped in at the office to say a quick hello to the school’s administrative assistant. I was grateful to the guy. He’d straightened out a problem with my paycheck. I had, long ago, put aside my childhood dreams of becoming a multi-millionaire. So when the school’s new automatic deposit program began sending my pathetically low paycheck to a guy named Ivan living in Ukraine, my financial situation rapidly went from bad to pleading with the mortgage company. I’d told the admin about my problem hoping he’d tell me who to contact. Instead he’d said, “I’ll take care of it.”

I tried to tell him that I fully expected to chase down the details myself. “I wouldn’t hear of it,” he’d said. “You have a class to teach.” Two hours later, the money had appeared in my account. 

Today when I entered the school office, the admin rose from his chair and slightly bowed to me.

“May I take your jacket, sir?” He wore a black suit, completed with a black bow tie and white gloves.

“Is there a special function today?”

“I don’t believe so, sir. Shall I check your calendar?”

I had a calendar? 

He dusted invisible lint off my shoulders and straightened the back of my collar, saying, “Yes, much better now.”

I fumbled for words. “Did the principal approve the funds for my field trip to the aquarium?”

“No sir, but I contacted the PTA chairperson, Ms. Hogenboom, who informed me that they are willing to pay for the outing. I’m currently preparing a letter, about both the trip and the required expenses, for your signature.” 

Suddenly, disgust wrinkled the bridge of his nose. I turned, following the direction of his gaze. Shock BONKED me in the face. The principal, standing in the doorway, was dressed as the Penguin. His elaborate costume boasted a tux, with tails, a top hat, an umbrella, and a ten-inch long cigarette holder complete with cigarette and a wisp of smoke. I glanced at the sign on the wall above his head.

‘State law prohibits smoking in all public buildings.’

In his right hand, almost tucked behind his back, he held an invoice. My 20/20 eyesight easily read ‘Specialty Meats’ and ‘$5,565.’ 

“Out of my way, out of my way.” The Penguin principal waddled into his office and, SLAM, shut the door. 

With his nose in the air, the admin said, “It’s a pity I never speak ill of my employers.”  

I jogged to my classroom. A quick internet search turned up an unexpected photo of the principal. He’d recently opened a nightclub. 

Of course. Ship the steaks here and invoice the school. Buy cheap food for the children and transport the steaks to the club. Now for a little recon.

I dashed down the rear staircase, shot out a side door, sprinted across the parking lot, vaulted over the ten-foot fence into the playground, and reentered the building through the playground entrance. 

On soundless feet I walked toward the rear kitchen door. Hearing voices, “Hey, this is good stuff…,” I passed by the kitchen door and entered the main cafeteria dining hall. Bending low, beneath the counter top over which the children received their lunches, I counted two men, by their voices, and one by his wheezing, probably a cold. 

KREEK…the loading dock door opened. SLAM…it closed. Silence. I entered the empty kitchen…KREEK…and darted behind a row of cabinets as the men came back in, talking.  

“…that old bird won’t miss a box or two.” 

“You either got nerve or got stupid. You know what he’ll do to you, if he finds out…” 

I paused, itching to pounce, muscles taut. One step, and I’d be within a fist’s reach. 

KREEK. KREEK. A burst of cold air. SLAM. Again silence, like my living room, like my life. 

Stamped on the boxes littering the floor: ‘Grade A Angus.’ 

I stepped into the pantry: peanut butter, bread, grape jelly, juice boxes, milk left out…

…I looked toward the outer door a wild need surging and dying as my own voice snarled, “You’re only a second grade school teacher.” 

*

Back in my classroom, I paced, fists clenched, imagining comic book words flashing above the heads of the Penguin’s men. BAM! KLANG! KRAK!

Superman’s arrival brought me back to reality. “What are we doing today?”

“Pull up a chair. Let’s catch some thieves.” 

“Cool.”

He sat beside me as I sent an email to the new police chief…Gordon…routing it through an anonymous remailer. ‘Urgent. Crime in progress. Principal stealing from the school…” BLA BLA BLA… 

The cops came at lunch with sirens and lights. Superman rushed to my side. Three cops led away the handcuffed Penguin principal, but with them were three other men dressed like thugs.

I stared. “What are they doing?”

“The police are taking him away.” Superman said.

I knelt beside the boy. “How many police officers do you see?”

“Six.”

“Are they all in police uniforms?”

“Of course. Don’t you see them?”

*

The long slow march to Halloween continued. Around me more and more people donned their costumes, the bad guys outnumbering the good a hundred to one. I told myself I wasn’t insane. Every day people hide their evil natures beneath T-shirts and jeans, they disguise their greed with high heels and lipstick. Seeing the truth didn’t make me insane, it made me gifted. 

I met my neighbor, Cat Woman, at the grocery store. Her voice a soft purr, she rubbed up against me. Dodging her claws, I backed away and exited through the automatic doors…What?…I turned…but it was gone. I could have sworn I’d seen a black cape swirling in the sliding glass.

5:00 a.m., roll out of bed. One hundred push-ups. One hundred sit-ups. Two mile run. Breakfast. Shower. I stared at my face in the mirror…hoping to see…

NO! 

Every man dreams that inside, beneath the nine-to-five job and the meager pay is a superhero if only things had worked out differently. I wasn’t giving in to useless fantasies. I threw a towel over the glass. 

I spoke loudly, confidently, into the silence of my dingy 1950s Pepto-Bismol pink bathroom. “I am making a difference. There is no job more important than being a teacher. The children need me.”

Bitter winds blew the last of the leaves from the trees, while more and more children in the school put on their costumes. Some weren’t heroes.  

Tommy Myers, a fifth grader, froze Amy Wilcox in a block of ice. No one saw Tommy freeze her, but Tommy had blue skin and an ice gun. 

“Hey, I didn’t do nothin’.”

“Tell it your momma, kid.” 

I shipped him off to the new principal, got out some blankets, and gave Amy my thermos of chicken noodle soup. After she’d melted a bit, she told me what Tommy had said he wanted to do to her. “I was too scared to move.”

The next day, on the playground, in the blink of an eye, Superman morphed into Lex Luthor complete with a baldhead and a business suit.

“You’re an idiot,” he shouted as he hit another kid. “Do what I say!” 

“No.” I pulled the little villain aside and spoke to him like an equal, superhero to superhero. Together we swung on the monkey bars, climbed the wall, and threw ourselves face first down the slide. Ignoring the new principal’s modern recess policy, I extended our outside time and played with him until his hair grew back and once again the big ‘S’ appeared on his chest. Then as suddenly as it had appeared the ‘S’ vanished and my comic book world with it. For the first time in four weeks I saw not Superman, or Lex Luthor, but the child’s real face. He’d lost a tooth. 

“Look Mr. Wage,” he put his tongue through the hole.

I laughed, ruffled his curly hair and renewed my vow not to look at my reflection. His smiling face was all I needed. In my car I flipped down the rearview and twisted away the side mirror. At school I put a poster over the glass in my classroom door and taped up the children’s artwork on the exterior windows. I told myself that I’d help Superman grow up to become the hero he wanted to be, and that I’d protect Wonder Woman until she learned to deflect the bullets the world was already firing at her. 

I want to be a second grade school teacher. 

My delusions came crashing back on Halloween. Now not only the people, but everything, became a comic book. Instead of a moving world, I saw only still frames each a page painted in ominous colors: an orange sunset striped with chocolate creeping shadows, a single street light on beige faces and dusty purple buildings, a girl framed in a window, fuchsia and black. Crooked trees and slanted houses replaced the upright world and everywhere grotesque villains drooled. 

Even my home was lost to me. My TV displayed only comic book people. Laughing wildly, I grabbed the remote changing the channel trying to find out what the Simpsons looked like. On the living room wall my diploma had morphed into a large grandfather clock…the secret entrance to the…

Desperately, I felt the wall beside it. 

It has to be here…I taped it up…

Flash had drawn me a picture of himself, a blur on the page. At the top he’d written ‘I’m the fastest man alive.’ I couldn’t find it.

I need help. 

I made an appointment, the last the doctor had for the evening. Glimpses of the real world greeted me as I drove, as if the world, like me, was grasping at normal, trying to hold on. I found the doc dressed in khakis and a bright blue polo. As I talked he listened, nodded and scribbled. I relaxed. In the corner of the room a fish tank bubbled. 

“Am I crazy, Doc? I thought perhaps I was seeing the truth. That maybe if I looked in the mirror I’d see the person I was supposed to be.”

“Hmmm…Instead of a second grade school teacher?” His lips seemed to jeer at me.

I concentrated on the faint bubbling sound. “Well, yes.”

“Hmmm…Do you intend to become this superhero?”

I looked at the fish tank, anywhere but at him. In the glass his reflection grinned back at me, a wide, stupid grin…and the green hair…

“Do you intend to become this superhero?” he repeated.

“Well, I thought…maybe…”

“Hmmm…But you’re here now because you know you need help. You know what you’re seeing isn’t real.”

The walls of the room painted themselves purple. Now he wore purple pants, purple shoes, and purple gloves. 

No, No. 

I closed my eyes willing the colors away. “I know…I think…I’m supposed to be…more.”

“Hmmm…We all want to be…more…but maturity is about contributing where we are, not about living in a fantasy world.”

“I’m NOT INSANE!”

He held up two purple-gloved hands. “Please let me help you. I know of a wonderful facility. You’ll be surprised how much better you’ll feel after even a few days.” He retrieved some forms from his desk and handed me a pen. “Only a formality. The lawyers need these things.” 

I took the papers from his outstretched hand and saw again his normal face. I began to read. After a few minutes he interrupted me and took the forms back saying, “I’m sorry these are so tedious. Perhaps you’d care to take the online video tour. I’m sure seeing the facility will make you comfortable with the decision.”

Around me like kernels of popcorn the furniture morphed. POP, suddenly I was sitting on a chair made out of a playing card—the King of Diamonds. POP, POP, POP, the lamp shades transformed into jester hats. POP, the door painted itself clown red.

Though I’d only begun to read the document, he flipped the papers to the last page and pointed to the signature line, “You’re a good man. Think about your job. What if your delusions caused you to harm a child?” The clown face frowned, a ridiculous frown, full of fake sadness. 

Did he really think I’d be so easily fooled? 

With one fluid movement I grabbed his notepad, retrieved the napalm from my utility belt and set the pages on fire.

He scrambled out of his Queen of Hearts chair. “This is a part of your delusion. Nothing you’re seeing is real.”

“Isn’t it? Tell me, how did you diagnose me so quickly without a thorough physical? And why don’t you want me to read the forms before I sign them? Let me guess. They include a medical power of attorney. You probably own the facility you just recommended. Once I’m there you’ll prescribe medicines I’ll never receive, and claim to have performed procedures never rendered.”

“These delusions are simply part of your problem.” He backed toward the door while casually putting one purple-gloved hand in his pants pocket. “Our session is over.” 

“Why? The fun’s just starting. How many men does that emergency pager in your pants pocket bring?”

Five men entered. I knew they were probably dressed in white, but I saw them as the thugs they were. I smiled. 

BAM! SLAP! And KRAK! White bone pushed through bloody flesh. I do so love compound fractures. KRAK! KRAK! SLAM! WHACK! KRAK! One more…KRAK! 

I found the doc cowering behind a three-of-spades end table. With one hand, I held him aloft, his purple shoes five inches off the floor. 

“AHHH…,” he screamed.

“Hmmm…Are you afraid of heights?” I asked.

“I’ll report you to the police.”

“Hmmm…you’re going to be too busy running from them.”

The doc tried to look confident, “I’ll destroy you! You’ll never teach again.”

“Hmmm…Do you think I gave you my real name?”

“Our session was video-taped.”

“Hmmmm…too bad I hacked your computer network.” 

“What?” He glanced upwards into the corner of the room.

“Hmmm…your cameras aren’t working.”

Suddenly bored, I threw him, face first, into the sheetrock wall. 

“Hmmm…someone’s going to have to clean off that lipstick stain.” 

The doc had gone beddy-bye, but my foot itched. So, I scratched it, and put my heel into his shin. KRAK!

“Hmmm…that’s going to hurt.” 

My comic book world with its Halloween moon greeted me as I stepped outside. Nothing was real, and everything was real, achingly real, sharp-edged, the ambiguity of life washed away like ink running off a page leaving only that which was indelible, the gaudy truth. 

I ripped off my fake mustache and stretched my arms wide loving the faint soreness of well-used muscle. I pushed my key fob and grinned. I certainly didn’t miss my old car. I took the expressway at a slow, creeping 105mph. I swooped on silent wings, nocturnal, darker than the night, a living shadow. In the distance the great city sparkled. I soared across the bridge, the needle on the amber dial sinking into oblivion.  

Forced by buildings and taxis and every sort of construction, I slowed and stopped in a comic book city lit as bright as day, glaring with color. High above it a clock tower loomed. I got out of the car and breathed, inflating lungs that had never before fully expanded. I breathed in deep again and again, polluted air, and I didn’t care. I breathed in dankness and darkness, and with it destiny and purpose. I breathed and breathed. The city needed me. 

As All Hallows Eve with its bright costumes and sweet illusions drew to a close, I tilted my head downward toward the hood of the car, it polished to sparkling, toward the face I hoped to see… 

…and the great clock, a comic book clock, chimed midnight. 

BONG. And I stopped. Was this the ultimate self-delusion?

BONG. Was I mad? 

BONG. If I turned away now, 

BONG, if I didn’t look, 

BONG, I’d be normal. 

BONG. I’d be a second grade school teacher, 

BONG, for the rest of my life. 

BONG. But what if I wasn’t insane? 

BONG. What if this was my true destiny? 

BONG. But…but who’d let Wonder Woman be strong when everyone else demanded she be weak. 

BONG. And who’d let Flash run?