I am a bit overwhelmed with life, because I’m no superhero. I have six speaking engagements over the next four weeks (and four of them are multisession all-day events). I also took on a couple of new writing clients, which I am thankful for, but which does make my days far busier. And then Les and I start tutoring at our local elementary school next week. So, to ease my burden and yet still get some blog posts out there, for several weeks I am going to recycle some blogs from my early blogging years (I began in 2005). I hope you’ll enjoy them. And if you do, feel free to go back and explore some of the classics. You can find links on my blog home page.
Superheroes and Superheroines Go Forth!
How many female superheroes (also called superheroines) are there? Well, when I wrote to encourage my friend Nancy who had too much to do and too little time to do it in, I could only think of three–Superwoman, Catwoman and Xena.
Superwoman’s gifts certainly were what Nancy needed to survive December. But Catwoman? Not so much. And what were Xena’s gifts (besides that body) and how did you spell Xena anyway? So of course, I Googled “female superheroes.”
When the Wikipedia entry appeared , there were hundreds of superheroine names. Who knew? (Comic book geeks, I guess.) I decided that Nancy should be Triplicate Girl, who could replicate herself.
Oh, and there was Liberty Belle, whose gifts of enhanced speed, strength, and stamina Nancy needed and whose power source was the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, which is just blocks from Nancy’s home.
Superheroines stayed on my mind. This morning I was making up women with superpowers who could change all the bad stuff in the world. Hydra could purify water, removing all the toxins and disease. Aireille might pull pollutants out of our air. Morsel could provide food for the hungry. Safe, appropriate housing would appear wherever Abodea stepped. You get the point.
Changing our world would be so much easier if superheroines would just show up and get to work. But wishing doesn’t make it so. I don’t have a magic wand or a genie in a lamp to do the trick either. Even my lucky rabbit’s foot isn’t performing,
That means it’s up to us. What can I do? Certainly not purify air with my breath (quite the opposite more likely). But I can take the bus to work so that my car emissions are reduced. And I can make gas mileage a crucial factor when I buy my next vehicle.
What can you do? You may never be a superhero, but you can still be heroic.
In While You Were Sleeping, Peter, played by Peter Gallagher, says to Lucy, the Sandra Bullock character: “I don’t think I’ve done anything truly heroic in my whole life.”
Lucy tells him, “You give up your seat every day in the train.”
“Well,” he replies, “but it’s not heroic.”
“It is to the person who sits in it.”
Go be a hero to someone this week.
originally posted Sunday, December 18, 2005 9:07 AM