Day 4

Or, Superpowers

If you're wondering where I am in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Lana, I'm on page 585 and the plot has taken a turn away from superheroes and magic and romance and fistfights and the delightful literary circle of New York City in 1941. To quote the Scattered Pages, it's getting nasty. So my reading has slowed down, not because of the writing (which continues to read like candy) but because those Empire boys are breaking my heart...

After intense doses of a 585 pages of a novel about comic books and superheros, I've been looking at the world with a new respect for those who wear heavy plastic rimmed glasses, and hearing sound effects (splat! bam! ziiing!) where there should be none. I also have fantasies about super strengths and "the little guy" winning out.

So today when a bigger kid dumped Michael P's backpack in the toilet, (Michael P who must be warned at least 15 minutes in advance if I'm going to call on him, otherwise he stays mute) and then later a crowd of ruly blue shirts shoved Domingo G into a metal pole (Domingo G who loves squirrels, Australian animals, his mother and nintendo) my heart expanded to ten times its normal size--yes, like The Grinch--I tore off my plastic-rimmed glasses and teacher cardigan to become my alter-ego: The Gerund.

Swifter than a simile, larger than hyperbole, running, kicking, punching, kung-fuing and lecturing her way to a more grammatically perfect world. Editing out bullies and misplacing unattractive modifiers. Turning this "rough draft" school into a place worthy of publication.

I closed my eyes and The Gerund hurled an editor's caret at Bully #1, striking him right between the eyes. Dizzy, he stumbled backwards and fell into the old, abandoned swimming pool covered in green sludge, where strange tentacled creatures nipped and grabbed at his ankles. As for the ruly crowd, the meaner ones found themselves bombared by a swarm of blinding asterisks, stopping them dead in their tracks and causing them to walk straight into walls, poles, each other. In the chaos that followed, one figure slipped out silent as a parenthesis, humming a little tune and twirling a gold classroom key between her fingers.

Later, an office worker sent to see what the fuss was about would say that in the hallway he saw no one, only last year's English teacher who smiled at him and asked him for his hall pass.