Around the same time I donned these flashy undergarments, I was also heavily in to watching Saturday morning cartoons. Every Saturday from 9a.m. to noon, kids had somehow managed to gain complete control over all the TV stations in the world. I dabbled a bit in Smurfs and School House Rock, but the main attraction, hands down, was Superfriends. No normal kid could stand to sit still after absorbing a half-hour’s worth of the Superfriends (including the Wonder Twins with sidekick, Gleek, the caped space monkey) foiling, once again, the evil plans of Lex Luther and his Legion of Doom. So, after my cartoon fill, I’d suit up in my Underoos, dart outside like the Flash, and take to the skies in pretend flight through the neighborhood.  

Barefoot, half-naked, and unashamed, I fought crime in a pair of snug blue briefs and a Spiderman T-shirt. Often, an imaginary spiderweb did the trick for getting me around. I’d breeze through the summer lawns as Spiderman would the streets of New York. Whenever I reached the length of my web, I’d perch myself on an old, termite-ridden log that had rolled off our backyard woodpile onto the grass. A log always made for a nice imaginary flagpole, especially one that hung from the 50th story of the Daily Bugle. Up there, I’d ponder the crime-filled streets below. When it came time to move on, I’d flip my wrists over, bend them just slightly so, and emit two suddens bursts of sound: psst, psst. In my opinion, these sounds–a sort of hiss placed between a “p” and a stong ”t”–most accurately described my shooting webs from my wrists. Once my web grabbed hold of something sturdy, like a skyscraper, a radio tower, or a large man’s back, I’d give the web a tug for good measure, then sail off to my next destination.  

Sometimes it became necessary to set a web trap for the bad guys. This took a lot of psst’s. A neighbor curious to see what the fuss was about could look outside in time to see a streak of legs disappear around his house corner or behind a wall of trees. The same neighbor might also have wondered just who had taught this odd little boy how to run with his hands clasped in a ball above his head. It was like he hung from an invisible thread. He’d never play sports. 

One day, I had the Joker and his villainous cronies on the run. My plan was to cut them off in a back alley somewhere. So, I took a short-cut through my backyard and, to my dismay, landed my barefoot on an angry bee collecting dandelion pollen. A sharp pain shot up my foot. It worked on me like Kryptonite (blasted Joker!). But instead of falling weak and listless to the ground in typical Superman fashion, I burst into tears and bawled like the 4-year-old I was. Finally, I collected myself enough to hop home on my good foot. Mom doctored my war-torn foot and, although I didn’t quite know it yet, I had learned something: justice is not always embraced in this world.    

Later, after my Underoos grew too tight, my mom hit up Jo-Ann Fabrics, and I upgraded my superhero wardrobe to capes. I had a Batman one and Superman one. They both were very cool and did wonders for my crime-fighting. Although, as I got older I grew tired of pretend flying. I wanted to fly for real. So, one gray day, I tied on my Superman cape, went outside, and started jumping, both arms out, with the intent that I might eventually stick in the air. When my efforts failed, I turned to God.

“Please, God, give me the ability to fly.” Jump. Crash. Then again, “Please, God, I want to fly.” Jump. Crash, again.

I carried on like this for nearly an hour. Eventually my bones started to ache, and I realized (could it be?) I was a victim of unaswered prayer. Or worse, a prayer forever answered with a disquieting ”no”. 

What’s with this not letting me fly stuff? I mean, am I missing something? Is this not a noble request? 

I was mad. I had prayed really hard, with my eyes shut and everything. The thing was, I’d been to Sunday school and knew that God was all-powerful. If He wanted me to fly, then I could fly. It was clear that He just refused to let me.

In my teens and early twenties, I would sometimes look back at that day and think what a cute but silly prayer it was. It was a little-boy-with-an-overworked-imagination prayer. Of course God wasn’t going to let me fly. Why would He?  No one could fly, except Superman, and he, first of all, was a sun-powered alien, not a human, and, second, wasn’t even real. The whole thing made me laugh at myself. My prayer wasn’t practical, it wasn’t scientific, it wasn’t…wasn’t important, what with half the world starving the way it is.

But the funny thing is, now I see things in a different light. That little boy with the Superman cape may have known what he was doing. As I read the Book of Isaiah, I find a new answer to my boyish prayer. And the suspected answer may not have been ”no”. Nor do I believe God blew me off with a light, good-natured chuckle. But instead, if I’m reading Scripture correctly, I believe God’s answer was “wait”:

[B]ut those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles (Isaiah 40:31).   

 And besides, Superman is not the only person who can fly. According to Luke, Jesus flew up to Heaven. And if Jesus is the prototype of the resurrected man, it doesn’t seem so far-fetched that I should fly too someday. With that said, Jess has a sewing machine in the basement, and it looks like I have a date with Jo-Ann Fabrics. And maybe this time I’ll swing by DSW for some superboots, to ward off any Kryptonite bee stings.

 If you don’t count the tv remote, it was good that Jess had refrained from operating heavy machinery. However, she did drive home on the stuff, and I half-wanted to check her car for dings, animal fur, or perhaps, an embedded lawn ornament.

Abandoned and left with nothing to do, I went right to work at mindlessly zoning out on random fixtures in the living room. When that grew tiring, I thought it might be good to check Jess’ pulse and wait for clear signs of breathing, just to be safe. I did the same with our dog, Phoebe, who lay beside her as though she, too, had gotten into Jess’ pills. The silent, sad walls of the house began to get to me, however, and though Jess and Pheobe snoozed away within arm’s length, they seemed a million miles away. Part of me couldn’t help but feel a little insulted that no one invited me to the 24 hour sleep-a-thon.

After an instance of self-pity, I adjusted to the realization that I should be happy because the night was mine to do whatever I pleased - as long as I did it very quietly, so not to wake the house. But the quiet was too much. For a split moment, I flashbacked to high school library. My chest tightened. I sensed that all too familiar pinned up adolescent rambunctousness. The urge to suddenly bust out laughing and wing paper wads at someone swept over me. Then the fear - I felt eyes on me. Mrs. Matthews was here, I knew it. Any second, she’d emerge from her hiding place, out of the deep dark shadows of the book shelves, and kick me out for another two weeks for being “too loud.”

At the risk of going completely insane with high school flashbacks and the maddening silence, I flipped on the tv. Jess was out for the night, anyway, no matter what ruckus I caused. Instinctively, I landed on the History Channel, which, to my delight, happened to be showing MonsterQuest, a documentary featuring daring scientists and cameramen tracking the jungles of developing countries, hot on the trail of the most notorious mythical creatures, such as the Lochness Monster, Big Foot, and Danny Devito. This noble expedition is done, of course, in the name of Science and, the less advertised, to get to the bottom of what the heck’s in the water that’s making the locals crazy.

But, if you ask me, I don’t think the locals are crazy at all. In fact, they are quite brilliant. What’s better to boost the economy of a poverty-stricken country than the monster tour biz? There’s always a market - man’s innate curiosity - and there’s practically no overhead, just a map and a perhaps a monkey in a mask.

And that may be precisely what we had on our hands here. This particular episode starred ”the real hobbit”, named after the loveable, tiny furry-footed creatures in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novel triology. In short, the real hobbit is described as an orange-haired, three-to-four foot tall monkey-like creature with a human face (perhaps Gilbert Gottfried’s) whose favorite hide out is the thick jungles of Sumatra, Indonesia. According to eyewitnesses, it has the exact dimensions of the native orangutan - but that’s not what it is! Okay?!

Sometimes, I guess, this baby Chewbaca comes out and says hi to the villagers in his own special monkey-man sort of way by grabbing at roots and bolting up the overgrown side of the nearest dormant volcano when spotted. He’s not particularly violent or cheerful. In fact, the locals call him Orang Pendak, which means “we don’t know what he is or where he came from, but he’s very dull and could certainly use a shave.”

Before the expedition began, the scientists hired the local monster tourguide who had a booth set up right next to the “COCONUT DRINKS FOR 3 BANANAS OR TWO CHICKENS” stand guy. (By the looks of the place, I guessed barter system.) He didn’t speak a lick of English, but in his perfectly urban American translated voice, he went into wild detail about his confrontation with the real hobbit. Upon seeing him, the tourguide froze, he recalled. The real hobbit, probably startled by the monster tourguide bursting in on him in his jungle bathroom, did the only thing a real hobbit knows how: he grabbed at roots and made for the dead volcano.      

To my knowledge, no one’s actually ever held a conversation with the real hobbit. But the general consensus is that he is very intelligent. This was largely confirmed by the way the camera now and then panned in on the treetops, implying that the real hobbit could be cleverly hiding up there, watching (and eating popcorn) as his own search party stumbled through the jungle below calling out his name as if for a lost dog.

Turned out, after a half hour or so of watching these guys tromp around, stopping occasionally to comment on caches of animal dung, I realized the real hobbit was about as exciting as a hermit in need of a haircut. The Orang Pendak was rather a bore. I mean, he could have at least earned the reputation of raiding the village and terrorizing some chickens, or something. But he wouldn’t even give us this.  

To be honest, I didn’t stick around for the second half of MonsterQuest to find out if the scientists ever found him. Chances are they didn’t. Otherwise we’d have heard about it in the news by now, probably on E!, posing as Michael Jackson’s newest pet, or something. But if the scientists ever decide to go after it again, and they need something to slow the little guy down to make him an easier catch, I know where they can find some stuff that beats any tranquilizer out there on the market today.

“Right, Jess?”

“Zzz…” 

It was so uncharacteristic of me to lay around watching old black and white reruns. But it felt really good and clean, and the humor was not lost in the process (as far as I was concerned, anyway). It all felt surprisingly healthy, like each laugh filled my body with vitamins and minerals. It didn’t take long before a sort of nostalgia swept over me. I longed for a better time in which I never lived. A time when things were happier, cleaner, and Ward Cleaver could solve every problem through patient reasoning and understanding.

But were things really better in the 50’s? It was, in fact, just a television show, I told myself. Just to get myself more grounded, I started running through a list of all the problems back then. Let’s see…there was the Korean War - that had to hurt something. Cigarette smoking was rampant - so, lung cancer. I think even doctors smoked while performing physicals on their patients. There were greasers (though that turned out to be a good thing for John Travolta). And rebels without causes. And, one mustn’t forget all the drag racing that went down.

Then my mind ran to the human condition. Surely, society still had their alcoholics, or families their screaming fights that kept the neighbors wondering whether they should call the police. Not that I was particularly rooting for this, or anything. No, people still had to be somewhat messed up…right? It was near impossible to believe that things weren’t all just soda shops and sock hops, as I watched the impeccable father-son relationship of Ward and the Beaver happening right there in front of me in black and white. Everything was just so…so…functional.

So my gears turned and turned, was society and family life really better back then? I landed on no real conclusion. But maybe TV was just better. Everything about “Leave it to Beaver” seemed to be of good taste. It taught good things about life, about relationships, about family. It taught our society good things. And although, no one could ever be the perfect father, like Ward, or the perfect wife, like June, or the…you get my point, it gave the viewers a good attitude to strive for. The old shows held society to a standard. Whatever may have happened in the 1950’s, whether good or bad, I at least felt it safe to conclude that “Leave it to Beaver” was a good thing.

And as I continued to think, with Jess begging me to change the station, a verse popped in my head:

“Whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things.” - Phil. 4:8