The summer of the superhero

It’s been that kind of a summer; a summer where everywhere you turn, up pops another superhero. Not too many months ago, The Incredible Hulk was on a big screen rampage. Iron Man showed moviegoers his mettle, and then Batman rewrote the movie record books with the emergence of The Dark Knight. Even Hancock became an unlikely superhero on the silver screen this summer. If you see Hancock, be sure to remind him of his new heroic status. I try to every chance I get. And then I had my own chance to become a superhero. As our vehicle left the IMAX theatre, in which I had just seen Batman kick all shades of evil behind and the Joker set a new standard for film’s best bad guy, the pickup truck screaming down the 401 ahead of us created a small mishap by losing an aluminum stepladder out the back. A normal person would notice this problem and stop on the side of the road to deal with it—but this is the mighty 401, where the FIDO rule (Forget it. Drive on.) is followed to the letter. The ladder skipped along the blacktop in front of us, and our driver leaned on the brakes to avoid it. As the car skimmed to a stop just shy of the ladder, we realized our problems were only beginning. We were now stopped dead in the “slow” lane of the 401, which means the cars behind us were only doing about a buck ten. The moment called for action, so I unbuckled my safety belt, exited the vehicle just like the police and other sensible people tell you not to, and grabbed the stupid ladder. It was heavier than anticipated, but not so heavy that a superhero in training couldn’t fire it unceremoniously about ten yards into the ditch. Problem solved. Under six seconds. As I raced back to the vehicle, a woman in a little car pulled up in an effort to pass. What she didn’t see was the man who so generously cleared her way. What she did see rattled her badly; a sweating, 300-pound ogre running barefoot into oncoming traffic on the busiest stretch of road in Canada. The ogre did the only thing that seemed fitting at the time, and yelled at the woman as he ran past her car: “I am part of the solution, not part of the problem!” I was never properly thanked for my act of selfless heroics, but such is the life of the reluctant superhero. Once the adrenaline wore off, we decided the new hero in the car needed a name. Now, naming a superhero is no simple task, and must be given great thought and care. A name goes a long way to determining a hero’s success. Of course, my friends settled on Burnout. Burnout, in case you are wondering, is the kind of hero who rides around on a motorized lawn chair and carries a lighter and can of WD40 as his secret weapon. His sidekick would be called Lowlife, or Skid Marks, or Scraps, and the two of them would patrol the 400 series highways in an old truck, seeking motorists in distress and collecting useful debris that gets tossed from passing vehicles. Becoming a superhero isn’t something most average folks plan on. Sometimes, it just happens, and you have to be ready to deal with it. Sometimes, you just have to be part of the solution, and not part of the problem.