Superman, I Feel Ya Brother

It's not easy being Superman. I would know; I'm pretty much just like him. Sure, I can't fly, I've never thwarted a single villain (let alone Supervillain), and I definitely don't know anything about wearing tights. But more important, what we do share is the same quintessence.

Like Clark Kent, no one knows my most astounding talent. Just as he gets no credit for safeguarding humanity from evil-doers, I never get my props for catching things falling from an overstuffed freezer.

With regularity, left-over lasagna comes shooting out of our Kenmore like a comestible RPG. And with equal regularity, I make one-handed diving grabs sliding across kitchen linoleum that make Jerry Rice look like a Pop Warner flag-football player. I mean, I'm really good at it. Guaranteed, if you set up a video camera in front of my fridge, I would churn out a SportsCenter Top 10 play ever week. It's wizardry, really.

Just this morning I made a save on a bowl of tuna salad coming off the top shelf that would have dropped your jaw and made your head spin. The grab I made combined the most athletic feats from all the major sports. I picked up a finely aged specimen of turkey and rye, not knowing it was the foundation of a structure crowned with an economy-sized bowl of tuna salad. Propelled by refrigerated food's innate desire to careen across the kitchen tile, the bowl of tuna shot from the top shelf and quickly accelerated past the sound barrier. In a Matrix-esque moment of time, silence was heavy as I began my defense of the floor against the bowl with enough tuna salad to resurface the Madison Square Gardens. Still holding the turkey sandwich in my left hand, I made a block with my forearm, causing the flying saucer to skid along it like a track. It was really nothing short of the artistry you might see from the Harlem Globetrotters, but with the added danger of tuna salad. The bowl launched from my arm and hurtled to the ground like a meteor bearing down on Earth. I dropped to a knee, my other leg sprawled improbably forward like a hockey goalie. Maybe even like a hockey goalie mixed with a puma. Yeah, like if a puma was playing hockey goalie, I made the acrobatic move to head off what was going to become a tuna bomb in a matter of milliseconds. With the sweep of a hand that you would swear was that of Willy Mays circa 1957 I swiped the bowl from the air, averting impact by the closest of margins.

Then I put it back on the top shelf and wandered off to eat the sandwich. Someday someone will eat that tuna salad (or throw it away sometime this fall) and assume it has just sat there on that shelf, never blazing through the calm confines of the kitchen at Mach 1, threatening to erupt in what would no doubt become Vesuvius all over again. Never will they know this mild-mannered blogger was receiver of the refrigerator, keeper of the kitchen, All-Star-puma-goalie-fleet-footed-swift-fielding-superhero.