Super, Man
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
There is an interesting comic running in the Toronto Star called Pardon my Planet. It is usually pretty funny but one strip back in September really struck me as hilarious. There was an elderly lady (I was going to say ‘old lady’ but that is probably politically incorrect as is everything else these days), as I was saying an elderly lady and an old geezer are sitting on a park bench. Superman is sitting between them.
In the corner it says ‘Unfortunately, as he grew into old age, Superman’s X-ray vision remained strong.”
The old dolly is saying ‘Hey, Supe, how are my hemorrhoids healing up?’
I have been a fan of Superman all my life, although I don’t like what Hollywood is doing to him, battling with Batman and God knows who else, but the more I thought about him and his talents, the more I realised what a boon he could be here in Ontario with our health care system all screwed up, the chronic lack of hospital beds, over-worked nurses and all the other members of the medical community stressed out – a situation Ford seems to be mishandling with his usual style and grace.
If you remember the first Christopher Reeves’ movie, his x-ray vision was far more developed than a means to check Lois Lane’s underwear (I often wondered how he would have answered if she wasn’t wearing any). Just by concentrating, he can melt rocks, steel, and lots of other stuff. He can burn through just about everything except lead. Can you see what a fantastic benefit this remarkable ability would be to the beleaguered surgeons in this province?
Now I admit I am not exactly sure what colorectal surgeons do to cure hemorrhoids but for some reason I think cauterization of the afflicted part is involved. Now without tying up busy hospital personnel, operating rooms and earth-moving equipment for the more serious cases, all a family doctor would have to do is contact Super and between them arrange for all his or her afflicted patients to line up down Mississaga Street around 8:00 am before most businesses are open. They would then have everyone bend over pretending to look in the store windows. There would be no need for the shyer people to have to drop their drawers and put on those stylish backless nighties. Super could fly by, take a quick peek, diagnose and if necessary repair the problem with a split second burn.
Granted there may be some pain involved and the aftershock could drive someone’s head through a window display but it would be worth it to get rid of the damned itch.
Having put several thousand colorectal surgeons out of work I must now move on. As much as we would all like to have a few superpowers, I wonder if the novelty would wear off after a while. Don’t you think x-ray vision and super hearing might become more than little annoying? Granted you could check the wife’s or husband’s gall bladder without lining up in the Emergency Ward half the night and those skin tags on your neck would be zapped in the blink of an eye. I suppose that would be okay.
The problem is super speed may work for him but not necessarily his missus. We didn’t see this scene because it was cut from the movie, but the night Super and Lois were married, she hardly had her shoes off and he was shaved, showered and lying in bed with a satisfied grin on his super puss. Not only that, thirty seconds later he was ready to go again and she hadn’t gone the first time.
Of all the super powers he has, is there one that you really wish you were blessed with too? Of course the ability to stop a speeding bullet would be handy if you lived somewhere around Jane and Finch or anywhere south of the border. Super-hearing would be okay I suppose, but I’m not so sure. Would you really want to know what the neighbours down the street are saying about you wearing your bright red underpants over your blue tights?
However, I do know what power every married man would die for and that is the ability to fly counter-clockwise so fast the earth would start to spin backwards. You must remember that from the first movie. Time went backwards and Lois’s life was saved.
Think about that for a minute, lads. Do you remember that morning when your beloved said, “Darling, do these yoga pants make my bum look fat?” and you said . . .
