Life According to Mike: Why they should call me Batman

Everyone, at some point, decides they need to identify with someone fictional. Well most everyone, whether they admit it or not. I will concede that there are probably 3 (or 3000) people out there that didn't and are really boring because they did not- but I digress. Many of us come to a place in our lives, especially when we are younger and more prone to daydreams and flights of fantasy where we want to be like someone we read about or see in a movie or on tv. Then we get older, like 22 and decide that as new adults we need to be something other than that ridiculous notion of heroism that our younger self wanted and we become more active (or less) as we try to realize our dreams. Most of us don't.
Some of us do.
Some of us don't in spectacular fashion.
Don't believe me?
I went to a slew of funeral in my 20's for friends who blazed out in 1 way or another. Not all of the funerals were had coffins and grieving loved ones mind you. In fact, many of them were parties and even celebrations but there was death/ending there and it was a funeral all the same.

Both of my parents reached high and in some ways each of them succeeded spectacularly. Depending on which one you talk to the other did well but met with an early demise unless, of course, it's a good day and they are feeling forgiving to the other. Then, it's a song of praise, although it was usually my Father who would concede the "victory," but in all "honesty" I didn't buy for a second that either of them really were trying to persuade me as much as they wanted to convince themselves. So what is my point?

My parents like so many adults stopped identifying with heroes.
They became adults (they were and are still interesting- but to a point.) and that meant no more dreams of youth and fantasy. At least not in any measurable means I could understand. I will say that when asked my mother will put up a good defense in favor of dreams and such but in the end you will never catch her or my father say (even to themselves) "I'm Batman."

Don't get me wrong. I love my parents. but my experience with them gets summed up like this:

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things.

(it's from the Bible- the ultimate killjoy on all thing fictional....kidding and only half true)

I guess my point is why is it so bloody important that I put away "childish things?'

First let me say that Childish Things mean a lot of different things to different people.

There is no set rule on what is and isn't childish.

To my parents however, it covered just about everything I EVER liked and cared about in my life.

I will give you (and probably my parents {just incase they read this and come looking for me in the basement}) the short list- which I have been told by them (and other adults) are childish.

1. Xbox Games (and all things video game)

2. Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D for me) and it's ilk.

3. Toys (for me stuffed animals- not the ones that get stuck on girl's beds, but for me gritty tactile imaginary friends like the tiger for that comic)

also action figures: Star Wars at first then others ending with GI Joe.

Toys were very important for me. They gave me the beginnings of my imagination. Not the beginning but one of the myriad of genesis to my imagination.
Part of this was I was a lonely child, not very good at making or keeping friends like many kids who were too smart and moody for the mainstream crowd

4. Comic Books. That is a entire collection of blogs worth except it actually brings me back to my point.

I am Batman.

Now I know that I am not actually Batman. I am not rich and my parents were not gunned down in an alley in Gotham (even if I am sometimes envious of this lack of similarity) I love you dad!

I am neither deluded into thinking I could go out in a cape, battle armor (think movies) and utility belt (thinkgeek would be delirious if I was) nor am I going to take on the criminal element without a Butler named Alfred and an army of Bat people.

Like that.

BUT

I AM BATMAN

in my head and imagination.

I way a one man war against the world as I have lived in and around it. My life has been blessed with many things and experiences. I have been fortunate to have parents who at very worst smothered me with affection and faith in my abilities (albeit not necessarily the one I wanted but the fact remains). Your parent's can't make life perfect for you (unless they have gobs and gobs of money and give it to you and then maybe.

This is me, right now, in the "real world." it's no one's fault. It just is this way. There are a lot of reasons.

The reason that I am going to give you today is

I AM BATMAN

let me put it this way. It is how I choose to deal with the world and my life. That is when I am fairly lucid and not feeling like being a Christian. I used to refer to it as my "rocket launcher days."

That takes me back. Wow, anyway if I can have a rocket launcher, I will go back to being BATMAN.

This one is for my brother. He is DARTH VADER

I bet you good money that he still looks in the mirror some mornings and wishes he was DV and didn't have to shave.

DV was my brother's Fictional hero (avatar persay)

Somedays I still see him as such and me as Obi Wan running away from him in the Death Star.... no wait I guess that would be me as Han Solo. I would be yelling unintelligibly with the occasional "I shot first DAMMIT!"

Sorry I figured you might need a visual right here.

Now where was I?

Oh, thanks.

What is it that makes Batman so appealing to me as a Fictional Character that I would pull him as my avatar.

Lone Wolf, isolate, self-imposed aloneness.

It's not a Bat Fetish despite what claims my ex-imaginary girlfriend claims.

In my imagination, my reality. The Batman represents a freedom from the reality of nothingness like in that (mostly annoying) movie

It did have however a valid point. We need to keep our imaginations alive or end up like the rest of A&E and the Walking Dead (no actual Zombie was used in this comparison).

So for today and tomorrow and probably most of next week, I will remain BATMAN

even though it will seem as heroic as this-