Cowboys Don't Swim

Why Reading Comic Books is Good for You

Reading comic books tends to build a desire to do heroic things.  I don’t mean parkour across the rooftops of New York.  I mean little things.  The “help the senior citizen across the street” kind of little things.  Random acts of kindness, some people call it.

The True Tale of the Abandoned Purse

After a not-so-hard day as an MFA student, I made my way down the hill from Sarah Lawrence to the Bronxville Metro North station.  I noticed (because one of my superpowers is hawk-like vision) a woman’s purse on a bench nearby.  I approached, glanced around, and saw no one who might look like the owner, except a heavyset woman playing with a small child nearby.  I asked if she knew who the purse might belong to.

“That lady.  She just leave.”

I wondered if the purse might explode.  It was small.  Too small to be much of a bomb.  Cannily, I decided it was probably what it appeared to be.  A purse.

I waited a few more minutes.  That lady did not come back.  My train rolled into the station.  I did not run to get on.  Instead, I called the police.  First I called 411, got the number for the local police station, and called them.  I really wanted to call 911 to see if they still said, “911, please state the nature of the emergency,” and how many rings it would take them to answer, because that seemed like valuable research for a writer to do.  Still, I didn’t want to bug the nice folks at 911.  They’re dealing with alien invasions, super storms, and the like.  The person who answered the phone was very nice.  He said he would send a car.

I waited.  It took about 10 minutes for a police car to arrive, a shiny, black SUV with yellow lettering.  Out stepped a stereotypical looking police officer.

“Where did you find the object?” he asked me.

The object?  “On the bench, right over there,” I said, pointing.

He took out a pad.  “What’s your name?” he said.

Hmph.  I wanted to be anonymous, but he had a gun, so I told him my name.

“Do you live around here?”

“No, I go to Sarah Lawrence.”

He wrote that down.  Asked, “Date of birth?”

I told him.  He wrote it down.

“Phone number?”

I told him that, too.  I wondered if he was going to arrest me on one count of random kindness.

“Did you open the bag?”

“No, I didn’t.”  I’m nervous now.  He was clearly suspicious of me on suspicion of how suspicious it was that anyone might try to help out another human being.  What the hell had I been thinking?  I was about to say, “I’m one of the good guys,” when he grunted and said,  “OK, I’ll handle this from here.  You can go.”

Now, I didn’t expect the officer to pin a good Samaritan badge to my nipple, but I thought he might have said a kind word or two about what a swell guy I am.  Then I recalled that Spiderman routinely catches actual criminals, leaves them hanging in a web from a lamppost, and usually the cops shoot at him.  Count myself lucky, right?

I walked up to the train platform.  The police officer rummaged through the woman’s bag on the hood of the car.  Then he stuffed her life back into the bag, got into the car with it, and picked up his radio.  A moment later, he was pulling away.

I wasn’t in it for a thank you.  Really.  But after he took down my phone number, I thought they might call to let me know that purse and person had been successfully reunited.  No such luck.

Oh, well.

MORAL?

What superheroes do, and what generally nice people do, is pretty similar.  The superhero stuff requires more CGI, I guess.  Both jobs are relatively thankless.  But it’s not about the thanks.  It’s about that feeling you get in your heart when a cop treats you like a dirtbag for no reason.  Er, I mean the feeling you get when you know you did a good deed.

Props to me, right?