When I was a little kid I would pretend that I was a hero. I
remember having an old navy blue sweater that I'd tie around my neck
and pretend it was a cape. I can't remember where I got the worn and slightly
smelly sweater, but I didn't mind. To me, it was the best darn cape any
kid could ever have and that was good enough.
Instead of having super powers
like most heroes, I wanted to be more like Batman or the Green-hornet and
have awesome gadgets and gizmos.
So one day, I went to the dollar store to buy a toy squirt-gun. Despite it
being fairly cheap, it lasted me for few good years. I still remember what it
looked like. It had a pink trigger and yellow lines on the handle. It also
had some hints of green on the stock. Overall, it looked ridiculous.
Villains, in my eyes, were those over the top
guys who could have gotten the job done had they not tempted fate and explained what they were
going to do right before they killed the hero. To me, that
didn't seem like fun. So instead,
I just pretended there was a bunch of robbers. To an onlooker, a majority of my time
playing was just me squirting water at all the plants in the garden.
My mother seemed pretty happy about this for some reason.
But after thinking about it a little more, mom was probably
just happy that she didn't have to water the plants.
It seems the closer I get to actually growing up and becoming an adult, the more I look back on my
life and think. Could I actually do anything significant in my lifetime or am I doomed to walk
the earth and never have any effect on the
world? It's times like those that make me think of my old navy blue sweater and
my oddly colored squirt gun and remember when I was a hero.
