Underwear as Super Powers

During the summer of 1979, I wore two articles of clothing.  One being a green one-piece swimsuit and the other a coveted and often garbed outside in the garden or woods, two-piece Wonder Woman Underoo set.  I recall wearing those blue star specked underpants and red with golden emblem undershirt with such sure pride in knowing I possessed super strength.  So sure that when my cousin, my same age came to visit, we were going to practice our underwear driven powers.

My cousin Tim owned Superman Underoos which made our collective abilities in my mind, insurmountably superior.  We ran on fallen tress, jumped off steep hills to roll and find ourselves unscathed, hardly scratched and fully and supremely powerful.  Until we found a pile of concrete blocks.  I remember yelling as I picked up a piece of broken block, "Tim, use your super-strength and break this block with your x-ray vision," as I hurled it at his head.

Needless to say, Tim's x-ray vision, super-breath and boy of steel strength jammed as the rock came at thankfully a five year-old's speed towards his head.  Tears, blood and six stitches at the hospital later, I still recall saying to my mother in full earnestness, "But we both had our super powers, I thought Tim was going to blow up the rock, I swear."  I swore I was Wonder Woman.  I had no idea my "powers" could also include actually hurting someone.  Thought my underwear was just a vehicle to the power I possessed.  Maybe this is what Victoria Secret tries to tap into the female minds of once Underoos wearers?

Thankfully, Tim still talks to me, doesn't have any visual scars and finds this story only a fragment of a funny memory.  But during a recent reading of Rob Brezsney's Free Will Astrology, I was reminded of the idea of super powers again.

If it were in my power, I'd help you identify the new feelings you have not yet been able to understand.

I would infuse you with the strength you would need to shed the worn-out delusions that are obstructing your connection to far more interesting truths.  And I would free you from any compulsion you have to live up to expectations that are not in alignment with your highest ideals.  Alas, I can't make any of these things happen all by myself.  So I hope you will rise to the occasion and perform these heroic feats under your own power. 

Okay, sure, perhaps you might think of astrology as being about as believable as a five-year old using their underwear as a means to tap into "super strength".  But maybe it doesn't matter.  Maybe all we need to know is that believing makes it so.  And what we believe is our power.

Let's look at Wonder Woman for example.  According to William Moulton Marston, the creator of  Wonder Woman, she represented, "a distinctly feminist role model whose mission was to bring the Amazon ideals of love, peace, and sexual equality to a world torn by the hatred of men." She does this by her own super powers which include, superhuman strength and speed, limited telepathy, profound scientific knowledge and the ability to speak every language known to man and beyond.  She is even fluent in caveman and Martian. (Seriously, I cannot make this up, just google it.)  But what I find most fascinating about Wonder Woman besides her fashion sense, are her bulletproof bracelets and her lasso of truth.  The fact she can make people be truthful seems far more powerful than bangles of fire.

This past summer when all of Missoula was covered in a layer of smoke for six weeks, I desired some sort of super powers to make the smoke go away.  Instead I went to some dark places in my head.  A lot of people had a hard time.  Imagine waking up everyday and thinking you are on a set for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Your dreams are filled with ash and opening the window you're filled with the scent of burnt toast. Thankfully during week four of the smoke, we left the valleyed city for a weekend in Glacier Park.  Truth be known, I had hoped to drive north and find ourselves literally crossing into a world of blue clear air.  We kept driving and driving and even to the entry of the Park there was a faint hint of smoke, the taste still heavy in the air.  Thankfully, we were determined to climb and this photo is taken from almost the top of Allen Mountain.  Truth be known, I never doubted getting to the top, but knew I needed some internal powers to make it there.  Ironically, Wonder Woman underoos are not sold in adult sizes or I would have worn them that day.

But that day climbing Allen Mountain as I did on that same summer day when I hurled concrete, I used strength I didn't think I had.  We all posses super powers.  It's just not something we wear in the form of a bangle or cape.  It's believing in the strengths we already have.  But here's the hard part, our strengths are also our greatest weakness.  Our strength to be able to hurt someone can be as strong as our ability to love.  You don't need a lasso of truth to figure that out nor do you need the right underwear.  It is just putting action toward making your ideals, real instead of imaginary.  Sometimes just one word at a time.

Here's a new poem.
Enjoy.

Volleyball in Hell

Charon carts you across to a gym,
concrete congested with the pang
of body odor trapped under polyester.
Positioned under a net, forced to play
volleyball with a group of semi-professional
Evangelists who you only disappoint. Charon,
now gym teacher, blows a whistle
with your every move, fouling out
your life, your now un-life where you didn't bring
any skills suited to win.  You, who never high-fived,
never arrived triumphant to a high school
locker room.  Your god didn't ass-slap
or pick sides.  More architect burdened
by the arc of a butterfly, built sky
to net stars and you, junior varsity
who forgot their shoes.  Perfectly unimproved.