My Superpower Is Nothing To Sniff Your Nose at

First, I want to apologize to all of you because I've not been around the past few months. I’ve missed hanging out with you. I haven't had the chance because I have been working on big things, hush-hush kind of things, but I'm among friends now so I can tell you. I'm a superhero now. Our market research with sample groups has been so positive that we are attracting capital investment. Superhero entertainment is a hot and still-growing multibillion-dollar industry, hungry for new ideas and diverse representation. Picture this: A person with a disability — a quadriplegic in a wheelchair, no less — who deploys high-tech gadgetry to manipulate and control his environment. Plus I have an attractive but tough love-interest with MacGuyver-like instincts and a snappy tongue, but more about her later. I've been meeting with my consulting team. My designers have come up with a sleek brownish costume — but I don’t want to reveal everything too soon. My writers are coming up with catchy taglines and scripts to pitch. My agent has feelers out to Marvel, DC, the CW, ABC, BBC, CBC and the CDC: This crimefighter is branded! The only thing I need — and it's a mere formality at this point — is a superpower.

So, how hard could this be? In our formative years and into adulthood they tell us to find our talent and pursue it: the thing that makes you you. Hm … to me, that was a toughie. As my English teacher, Mr. Lemon, who was tortured by Jesuits when he was a schoolboy, said as he was passing along his cup of cheer to the next generation, "You'll never amount to anything." Well, for a long time it looked like old Lemon was right. Some around me were good at figures and cyphering, and they became engineers or accountants. But no no no no, I wasn't good at that. Some were faster, stronger or more nimble, and they became athletes. No no no no, I wasn't good at that either. Design? Acting? The arts? No no no, no no no!

But there was something I was always good at — and I mean very good at, though I didn't want to be. So often we desire one thing, but life has entirely different plans for us. This thing has followed me around throughout my life. I try to run away from it but it's always there, hanging around me like a cloud, reminding me, and everyone around me, that it's there. I thought it was curse, just like I used to think of my disability too as a curse. But here was something that followed me throughout life, through my nondisabled to my disabled life.

To seek my destiny, I was looking up at the stars and finding nothing. But I had to learn that my calling had been with me all along, right under my nose. Actually, under my shoes. It was there the whole time, but I’d been holding my nose to the truth. Because always, from the earliest age, I was the one who would step in it. This is my singular talent. To my horror, finding thick, lustrous layers of it slathered up and down the soles of my brand-new school sneakers like my grandmother's rich apple-butter, and so zesty it makes my eyes water and my vision shimmer like a desert mirage. I never tracked it on my mom’s carpet, but I did on my friend’s mom’s carpet, her metallic baby blue shag that she lovingly raked every day in parallel rows with a dedicated matching baby-blue garden rake, but all of that care and refinement was laid waste by my awesomely awkward powers. The power that stirred horror into those around me, who fled like I was Godzilla and they were the people of Tokyo, all gagging. My unbridled powers knew no borders or boundaries: At the beach, I did it. At my prom, I did it. While holding my baby goddaughter when she was being christened outdoors: did it did it did it.

And the inclusive, accessible, truly ADA angle to this is that it’s followed me up to and into my progressing disability, through shoes, cane, walker and wheelchair. It's like the Riddle of the Disabled Sphinx: What steps in poo on 2 legs, then steps in poo on 3 legs, then steps in poo on 6 legs, then steps in poo on 4 wheels? It's me! The answer is me.

When I exile myself into the wilderness, to remove myself from the company of man and his pooping pets, I will run over the scat of deer, possums and raccoons; wombats and armadillos; and all of God's creatures that defecate. So this is the thing I am definitely good at, if you can say that a talent like mine is good. And I hated it. Who wouldn’t, right? That is, until one particular incident turned my thinking completely around. When I awoke that morning, it was a proclivity. And when I went to bed, it had become a superpower.

This was the worst of splooshes, it was the best of splooshes. It was fresh, it was enormous, and in my leather-soled dress shoes, it was what we call a slider. This was the magnificent poo of destiny. The ulti-poo. The poo that made me the man I am today.

I was running late, and in a very Clark-Kentish way. I had a hot date, with somebody way, way out of my league. Intelligent, capable, independent, who had traveled the world, a beautiful fair-skinned brunette with smoky eyes, and she was an actress! Oo, she was exotic. This was such an improbable date, I was still stunned she said yes, so I could not be late.

So of course I was running late, and her neighborhood was notorious for its lack of parking. This is a whole other story, but I made a deal with God, or the devil, whoever was manning the window that day, and I shoehorned my car into a space, and dashed from my car to her apartment building.

The other thing about that block was that it was around the corner from the lakefront, lined with expensive high-rises filled with wealthy folks and wealthy folks' doggies who all had to go walkies somewhere. That is how trickle-down economics works, folks, and Mab's block of older buildings for working-class folks had only thin strips of grass along the street. Something had to give. I had picked up my lovely date, on time (thanks, deity!), and while I basked in her presence and attention, I let my guard down. You all know what happened next.

As brown bombers to go, it was a legend. I’ll spare you descriptions, only to say that for a second or two I was literally surfing on it. I remember trying to wipe it off, to scrape it off, but I was swallowed in its vortex. Probably there were other active bombs all too, all waiting to be tripped off, because quickly it had spread to my other shoe. Of course I couldn’t let on what had happened, but inside I was having a poo panic attack, at least until we got in the car together and I had to roll down the window, apologizing profusely. "Do you want to take a walk instead, or do this some other time?" "No, we have reservations," she said, "don't worry." OK then.

We pulled away and went to the newest Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood, thankfully not far away, which had a wall of windows and bright sunshine illuminating the bright, colorful murals on the walls, and unique specialty dishes. She was dazzling and delightful. 

But our date was on a downward spiral. Neighboring tables made comments about a distinct odor in the air. I made sympathetic expressions to them, “I know, right. Ew.” And it became difficult to enjoy the fresh salsas we ordered, because of my gagging reflex. Later, in the movie theater, I took off my shoes and slid them under the empty seats a few spaces away. A couple of women actually sat next to the stink chair. After a short time, they wrinkled their noses and left for other seats.

Fast-forward, I somehow got through the disastrous date until finally, mercifully, it came time to make my escape… I mean, say good night. I saw her to her door and when I was turning away, she stunned me by asking me out. I was taken so unawares that she had to repeat herself, and eventually said, “But if you don't want to go …”

You could have knocked me over with a feather. So I said the worst possible thing: “Really?”

Her jaw dropped. “If you don't want to go,” she said, “I'll just find a friend —”

“No no no, I'll go. I'm just surprised,” I said, “after all this putridness and all.”

She said that the way I dealt with it and joked around about it all evening was endearing. “You could have done typical guy-stuff, but you didn't.”

I don’t know what the lessons are here. I’m not proud. I did a lot of squirming, but 24 years ago today, I placed a ring on that girl’s finger! All because of my unique talent.

Don't you know I saved the mementos, those shoes, and have them to this very day to remind me about my realization about myself? No, of course not, I threw those shitty things out! But I got the girl, and I got3 a newfound superpower that nobody else has — and I'm leaning into it, baby, or stepping into it, or rolling into it, or whatever. I gotta be me, and this is me.