Strange Visitor

Black and white citizens from the silver screen in my childhood dreams huddle together under the towering shadows cast by the bright white sun on the skyscrapers of gray steel and stone. The huddled adults – all dressed up to go nowhere in Sunday suits and hats -- point up to something like always, with a look part fear and part wonder, at something strange they've never seen before.

They look up at something from beyond the light, or perhaps from the light itself. I cannot tell. I am the exception, the lone strange child of the scene. The adults look confused, despite their view of what the something is. It may be a bird or a plane.

In the sky there is music swirling up, up: a softly whooshing wind of harps segues into a thunder of trumpets heralding the sound of a tornado. Then, a cliché, without warning, there is silence and the gentle touch of a powerful hand on my tiny shoulder.

"Would you like to fly?" asks a voice as genuinely warm and friendly as the smile of the man with the question, the man who was neither bird nor plane but was most definitely the cause of the confusion. He is a mystery man to others, with many secrets to his name. I know his secrets. I know his name. I answer "Yes!"

We flew into the sky until I woke up with a smile, knowing that I had dreamt the dream before and I would dream it again.

I did not know how far the dream would take me because I did not know this friendly flying fellow was more than just a television character. I did not know there were also over twenty years of radio, movies, newspaper funny pages and, most of all, comic books, telling his tales.

His stories seemed already endless, like a dream, and stories are tales of things that can happen, possibilities of life. Perhaps that is why the huddled masses looked so long in wonder up in the sky. Possibilities in our lives, the belief that we have the power to make things happen if we try hard enough, is what gives us hope -- and with hope we all can fly like the strange visitor in my childhood dreams. Like Superman.