It’s not
like I didn’t know who he was when we met.
He had on the cape, the tights, the giant letter “S” across his
chest. He looked like a very handsome
caricature of himself.
“Hello, I’m
Superman,” he said confidently, as he extended his hand.
“MOV,” I
replied. I felt my cheeks turn red. It’s not every day you meet a superhero.
His grip was
tight, but not too tight. He could
probably bend steel with those hands if he wanted to.
Once we
started talking, I confirmed that he was single. I know what you’re thinking: Lois
Lane. That’s what everyone says now
when I tell the story. But we actually
met way before he and Lois were an item.
Superman and
I had a lot in common. We both liked
long walks on the beach, saving puppies, and listening to rain while enjoying a
good book and a cup of hot cocoa. Oh,
didn’t I tell you? We met through a
dating service.
This was
back in the days before the Internet and Match Dot Com. You had to fill out a questionnaire with,
like, 50 questions, and poof! They would set you up with your perfect
guy.
I don’t
remember all the questions, but I do remember my answers: Super! As in, “If you unexpectedly found yourself
with a day off, what would your first thought be?” Or, “Tell us about your relationship with
your next-door neighbor,” and, “What is the one word your best friend would use
to describe you?”
It just
seemed natural that they would set me up with him. I liked Super and he was Super.
The
beginning was great. He called when he
said he would, showed up with flowers, always paid for dinner—that kind of
thing. He was courteous and
thoughtful. I even started to think about
introducing him to my family.
But then
something changed. He was very
show-offy. Say a giant metal safe was
falling out a window of a high-rise building just as we happened to be walking
under it? He would reach out and catch
it and prevent us from being killed.
Okay, maybe that’s a bad example because I am glad that I didn’t get
crushed by a safe. Oh, here’s one: if a baby was playing on railroad tracks FIVE
STREETS OVER then he would woosh away and save the baby or stop the train or
whatever.
The whole saving
people thing got to be annoying. It interrupted
a lot of romantic moments, if you know what I mean.
He was
always “on”—always paying attention to something else, somewhere else, some
element of danger lurking that I had no idea about. And everywhere
we went, people had to come up and shake his hand and thank him.
“Oh,
Superman,” they would swoon, “you are the greatest! Thank you so much for saving my dad from
being eaten by that shark,” blah-blah-blah.
Of course I
would stand to the side, smiling and nodding politely (what else was I going to
do?) and then the people would turn to me and say how lucky I was to be dating
Superman.
Lucky.
Yeah, right.
Then,
totally out of the blue, he proposed.
Literally out of the blue: he scooped me up, flew me in his arms to a mountain
top, and pulled a diamond ring out of a secret pocket in his cape.
I said
yes. Not because I wanted to say yes,
but because I felt pressured. And the
fact that I was on a random mountain top and not sure how I’d get home if I
said no.
He wanted to
elope, and I wanted to break up. He told
me to meet him down at City Hall but I was a no-show. I felt bad,
but I couldn’t go through with it. It’s
not like I have to be in the spotlight all
the time, but with Superman I knew I would never be in the spotlight. Ever.
He knocked
on my apartment door with a big bouquet of roses in his hand.
“MOV, can we
start over?”
My roommate glanced
up from watching TV and rolled her eyes.
“Look, S,” I
began, “I love the idea of you. But the you in the flesh, well … it’s a
little hard to take.”
He set the
flowers on the table and left. I never
heard from him again. Well, until last
week, that is. He sent me a friend
request on Facebook. I immediately
checked his relationship status:
Single.
And according to his
profile, he still likes saving puppies.
MOV
