I am Batman

As told originally on the Work Daily Email (WDE):

I would like to formally introduce myself to the WDE. I have apparently received the great honor and privilege of being added to this esteemed list and would like to extend my sincerest gratitudes to all those parties involved in getting me to where I am today. You're out there, you know who you are.

It has been asked of me that for my first entry to the WDE, I relay a recent anecdote that involved my roommate Paul Banks, myself, and everyone's favorite costumed vigilante everyman, Batman.

Before I begin though, I must start a side debate about Batman himself. Amongst all our favorite superheros, is Batman not the only one who is a regular human being, not inherently attributed with or radioactively developed super power mutations? Does this, in ones own estimation, make him a better or worse superhero?

At any rate, the following took place on:

Sunday, March 16th, 2008, 3:00 PM

I returned home from lunch with friends at Opal Divines to find Paul getting ready to leave. He said he was hungry and was going to get lunch, and asked me if I wanted to go. Though pleased by his amiable effort to elicit time with his new roommate, I graciously declined his offer. Paul decided to re-align the plan and asked if I would just like to walk up to Austin's Pizza, roughly a 1/2 mile down the road, with him so he might get a pie and we could catch up on the weekend and watch my now 22-straight win Rockets lay pure domination on the Gasol-less Lakers.

Should I have:
A - Declined again, stayed home on the comfort of the couch, and watched basketball alone
B - Accepted, but offered to drive
C - Accepted and made the walk

Regardless of what I should have done, I chose C.

We made it to Austin's Pizza and we drank our Sweet Leaf and debated Austin Chronicle band rankings while we waited for the pie.

Once Paul received the pizza, we should have:
A - Stayed at the restaurant and eaten the pizza
B - Loitered outside and kicked cans
C - Walked home with the pizza, a copy of the Chronicle, and bottles of Sweet Leaf in hand so we might catch the opening tip.

C is not the answer, but that's what we did anyway.

As it turned out, it lead us to walk upon a man, his wife? and their? two kids, trying to unload a 1993, enorm-o, f-all heavy, 61" TV out of the back of his truck, which was backed into the drive-way, up a steep incline.

The man yelled at us, "Hey, oh yeah, just what I needed! You guys, you guys, come here!" At first I thought he was going to accost us for Paul's 10" pizza, but then realized he was soliciting our assistance.

"Guys, can ya'll give me a hand with this?"

Paul and I paused, looked at each other, and quickly had to make a decision.

Did we:

A - Using our best collective judgment, decline the request due to the man's bizarre appearance, the precarious nature of the situation, and my lack of health insurance for the next 83 days, and run home?
B - Offer to help him find assistance since we were full-handed and Paul was hungry?
C - Set down the pizza, tea, and paper, and walk up to give the guy a hand?

Well, this wouldn't be much of a story if the answer wasn't C.

We approach and get a closer look at the gentleman, and this is what we see.

His hair is flat on top of his head, but spiked perfectly straight up in a circle all around the edge. He has perfect black marks under each of his eyes, almost as if he'd had black eyes tattooed on his face. He has on a sleeveless t-shirt with a perfect oval cut out of the chest through which you can see the exact Batman emblem tattooed in black and red. He has the Batman bio-hazard symbol tattooed on his left arm. He has the Batman bat tattooed on his right arm. He also has various and sundry other Batman related tattoos on his body.

We walk up and he says, "Oh thank you guys, thank you."

I say, "Hey, I'm Allen."

He says, "Hey, Batman."

Stunned. But we play it off like it's nothing.

We had quite a time getting the TV off the truck and into the house, but eventually we did it. He was extremely stoked. He could barely contain his excitement. He kept offering us beers and to stay and hang out. All the while, his "wife" and "kids", who were seemingly normal, though the kids were clearly Hispanic while both he and the lady were ostensibly white, were just hanging out, being normal. The lady was wearing a Spurs t-shirt and looked like any average suburban woman you'd see at the grocery store. She had a Texas A&M Century Club Member sticker on her truck. She spoke up on our kind nature when we mentioned we were Aggies. The kids seemed aware enough of what was going on. But the guy had extensive Batman paraphernalia in the house, including posters, a jacket, a cape, and best of all, a mask, hanging on his coat rack, plain as day. It was as if Paul and I had walked out of a pizza parlor directly into a Bizzarro World where average people live with adopted Mexican children in a duplex with a guy who has legally changed his name to match the likeness of a fictional Billionaire who dresses up in a rubber bat suit and fights super villians in order to salvage the integrity of every day normalcy.

In the end though, we created a comrade in our assistance to the righteous, crime-fighting crusader, and as far as we can tell, Batman can't be a bad friend to have.