Life is so much fun sometimes.
Who would have thought that, when I woke up one morning back in 1987, I would be scraping Superman's plate after a midnight meal during a film shoot?
“Get out! That was Superman?!! Maybe I should save this piece of bread left on his plate and sell it as a collector's item years from now – fetch thousands.”
The next day, the meal was to be served in a church basement at 5:00 p.m. Leaving my catering staff to load up and set up, I tore out of the kitchen at the last minute to pick up my 7-year-old son, Nathan. After he was buckled up, I started the engine and revved it up a few times to set the scene for a surprise. I had his attention.
“Sooooo, Nathan, how would you like to meet a man that is ‘Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive!’?”
“Seriously, Mom?!!!”
"Here, you'd better put on my sunglasses so no one will recognize you."
En route, he talked a mile-a-minute. As he was jumping out of the car, he looked back to announce that he’d decided I was going to make him a Superman suit for Halloween which, he reminded me, was only 9 days away.
When we arrived, Christopher Reeve was at the ‘make your own sundae bar’. I went to grab my son’s hand to guide him over there, but it wasn’t available. I mean, who would want their mom to be holding your hand when you met ‘The Man’?
“Superman, meet Nathan.”
Reeve gave him one hell of a handshake. During the shake, my son’s gaze kept moving back and forth between his hero’s face and the hall’s high, small windows.
“How come you don’t have glasses on? And how the heck did you get in here, anyway?”
“Welllll, um, my glasses are in my briefcase and, when I’m disguised as Clark Kent, I walk in through doors so nobody will know that I am - you know who. Hey, would you like to join me for a sundae, Nathan?”
“Do you play sports, son?”
“I play hockey, Superman. I’m the goalie. My Dad says I have all the equipment except for the penis-rack.”
Reeve, while giggling, somehow managed to say, “I hope you eat hard boiled eggs then. All the superheroes and goalies do. Come on, let’s dig into some ice cream and cover it with hot fudge sauce and whipped cream. Lots of whipped cream!”
My kid would have killed me if had known that I had prompted his hero into putting in a good word for hard-boiled eggs, the greatest lunch-bag food ever invented but seldom actually eaten in any school lunch room.
Halloween night snuck up fast and I was frantically finishing my son's costume while he supervised and munched away on what he now called his ‘superfood’.
“Come here, Babe. Let’s try this magical suit on and see if it fits.”
It fit perfectly but before I could stop him, he took off out of the sewing room, ran down the hall, launching himself into the air - hands stretched out in front but legs refusing to lift for take-off. CRASH!
Running to my splayed-out superhero, “Oh my god, Honey. Are you okay?”
Resisting tears, “Yeah, but this stupid suit doesn’t work, Mom!”
Years later, Christopher Reeve fell too. But he fell so hard and so wrong that it paralyzed him. The world thought, how ironic when it heard the sad news. Over the years, he came into my mind often. Yesterday, on the radio, there was a clip on the history of ‘Superman’, the first superhero who was born in a comic book 80 years ago.
Not only was Christopher Reeve a great actor, but he stood out for so many other reasons – he was just a regular-guy movie star, someone who gave my son one of the best thrills of his life and a man who became a real superhero.
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