Not Everyone Can Be a Superhero

I would make a bet that when we were kids we all wished, at some stage or other, that we could be someone special, like Superman, Spiderman or, heaven help us, even Batman. Sometimes those fantasies linger a little bit longer and live in the recesses of our minds during our teenage years, fading away slowly as we approach adulthood.

I seem to fall into some unclassified category of adults who still like to think about what life would be like if I found that I was, say, impervious to bullets. Oh, yeah! Fearlessly striding into battle, shooting at the bad guys with bullets bouncing off my chest as I single-handedly win the war. But I would also have to be able to fly as well because what is the point of, say, going to an Iranian nuclear site to blow it up if I couldn't get over the fence? I'd also have to have super-strength because even if they couldn't shoot me, all they would have to do is punch me in the nose and I'd be finished. Maybe I should add invisibility to my wish list because then I could sneak into Ahmadinejad's office and listen in on his secret conversations with evil terrorists. But what would be the point in that if I couldn't understand what they were saying? I'd have to be super-fluent in all languages, too. But I digress...

According to the Blue PLAY Survey (PDF), conducted by American Express in 2005, "More than a quarter of adults (26%) sometimes wish they could revert to their childhood years, saying life is too serious". That's only because they don't have powers of time-travel that can whisk them back to any point in time and change history to save the world from the forces of evil, all the while preserving the timeline they are sworn to protect, yet never revealing any of this to mortal man, destined to wander anonymously through time and space.

But not everyone can be a superhero. Just think about it for a moment - who would you save? The damsel on the outside ledge of a skyscraper is not there in distress. She is there because the ledge provides the best angle from which to zap the neighbor across the road with her magical zapping powers, while the neighbor uses his forcefield to deflect the zapping attack harmlessly into space. The hostages locked in an old vault deep beneath the earth are not gasping for breath as the oxygen supply slowly runs out and the time bomb sits in the corner ticking away. They are all busy morphing into their liquid form to slide under the door to freedom.

If we were all superheroes the world would be complete anarchy. As soon as someone says something that rubs the wrong way, there would be a fistfight with the two combatants destroying downtown Manhattan as they bounce off walls and do impossible acrobatic stunts off national monuments, even if they weren't in Manhattan to begin with. Imagine what would happen if your neighbor didn't like you. They wouldn't send their dog to eat your prize roses. They would rip your entire house from it's foundations and hurtle it mercilessly towards the sun. Meanwhile, in the Batcave, you would be refilling your Batman Utility Belt with Batgrenades and Batarangs which you would launch from your Batmobile in a drive-by attack on their home. Pow!

It would be an impossible situation. So, logically, I can only conclude that we can't all be superheroes. Some of you will just have to face the harsh reality that only us, a small percentage of the population, can leap tall buildings in a single bound. Now, out of my way while I practice landing.