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Short Superman is not fully convincing. He stands before the mirror stretching to his more-than-adequate height and wonders why his cape hangs limp across his shoulders. It should billow behind him. There should be wind beneath it and in his blue-black hair, and this bedroom with its defeated carpet should be the mountaintop of his achievement and glory. The world needs rescuing, and Short Superman’s been overlooked. Meanwhile, his Super Hearing detects the commuter train rolling over tracks that run past his window. He’ll have to do some Super Hurrying or be late for work. This report needs your special touch, Short Superman! My project is late, Short Superman, can you help me? Short Superman! Hold that elevator door! His hand darts to the doorframe faster than thought. Effortlessly he halts the progress of the diabolical horizontal guillotine threatening his direct reports. As if by design, the door reopens, restoring synergistic alignment in the workforce and making way for adventure. Thanks, SS! We’re going for drinks. Wanna come? Now, although drinks are kryptonite to Short Superman, camaraderie is his credo, and these good citizens may have clues to the riddle of his murky identity. Of course he’ll join them! At street level, though, Short Superman senses danger like a question mark hovering in the air and dashes off in pursuit of dastardliness. And now his cape does billow with the urgency of his mission. Godspeed, Short Superman! We believe in you this time! Not long after, our hero tosses back shots at the Fortress of Solitude bar on K Street and bores the bartender with comic book tales of managerial metrics he has destroyed without much thanks. You know that stuff is poison, Short Superman. Maybe you should take it easy. Don’t you have short Super Villains to catch?

Original Copyright © March 07, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 09, 2026

She’s staying at the only good hotel in town, a place I’ve never been, and giving a paper, whatever that means, and wants to see me while she’s here. We’ve never met, but I know things about her I would never ask anyone else. Not sexual, not all of them. She knows me from a very good photo of me and I know her from a photo of her, how good I don’t know yet. On the drive over I try to decide whatever I can say to her. We don’t want to change our lives, either of us, at least not as involves the other. And some of the words we use online I never say out loud. I wish I could email her instead. It gives me time to be someone. I’d say: How dangerous is it not to choose to love the life we’re given! Or: These glimpses of you make me want not you, but to be worthy of you. And wait an endless day for her reply. My car is not to the valet’s liking. He calls me sir with a tone. How long will I be, sir? I look at him, his cap, the brass buttons, the torn ticket he’s offering me in return for my woeful car, the weight of those granite walls behind us, doors revolving with an endless flow of people who know where they’re going, and I’m undone by the machinery of the whole business, by rooms with fresh linens and mini-bars, stacked into towers for other peoples’ husbands and wives to close the doors and work out their identities. Sir? Do you know where you are, sir? I hand him back his ticket stub and drive away from the hotel thinking, I can play this right. She’ll understand.

Original Copyright © February 24, 2007
Revised Copyright © February 27, 2026

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The pen name davidbdale honors my mother Beatrice (Bea) and my father Dale

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