How to be a superhero: Drive in the dark

One of the great measures of human aging is the sad decline of our willingness to drive in the dark.

I can remember a time when I didn’t even know that not wanting to drive in the dark was a thing. If I wanted to go somewhere, I got in the car and drove there.

It didn’t matter if it was high noon or midnight, or if I was driving a few blocks or a few hours.

I remember once setting out to go home for Christmas vacation. I got off work on a Thursday at 5 p.m. and got right on the road. Thirteen hours later, I was home. No big deal.

Then I hit the magical age when the greatest travel consideration changed from “Where do I want to go and when do I want to go there?” to “I can only go to matinée movies because night time frightens me.”

There is a valid reason for my aversion to driving in darkness. I can’t see.

I’ve been wearing glasses for about 25 years but only in the past couple have I felt that I would really be lost without them.

There’s no “I want to look cool today so I’m not wearing my glasses” because without them, I could find myself trying to converse with a pineapple.

And it’s getting worse. Now, even with glasses on, I am holding things closer then farther then closer again as I try to find a sweet spot where the text becomes clear.

Sometimes there is no sweet spot and I am heartbroken. I’ll be standing there in the grocery store holding my list, puzzled at why it looks so fuzzy, desperately trying to figure out if we need beans or beets or peas. When in doubt, I grab some Oreos.

My vision is not what it once was but, somehow, I continue to play hockey without glasses. And I’m the goalie.

Well, I didn’t say I’m any good. Fortunately, what I lack in vision I make up for in sheer girth. I take up lots of net space and the puck often hits me.

In fact, I think the scariest part of playing hockey isn’t the pucks flying at my half-blind head. It’s the drive home.

•••

Before I wrap up for another week, I would like to add to the well-deserved tributes to the Amazing Stan Lee.

With his passing, we have lost one of the most creative, innovative minds not just of a generation but in history.

Stan Lee didn’t just create characters and stories. He created a universe, an entire universe populated not only by good and evil but by everything in between.

His universe included nuanced characters. OK, sure, some of them could fly or throw cars or warp time and space but they were still nuanced, imperfect and so very real.

By harnessing a tiny fraction of Lee’s imagination, I spent a lot of time as a kid just being Spider-Man.

I’d cling to the side of a New York skyscraper (I was actually standing on the second rung of a fence).

I would sling webs from my wrists and swing (run dramatically, actually) from building to building. I would snare villains (my buddy Chris, or his dog) in my web.

Back then my reference to Spider-Man, other than drawings, was a cartoon that was so low budget it would repurpose the same footage over and over again. And I loved it.

As kids, we played road hockey and I was Darryl Sittler. We played “Dukes of Hazzard” and I was Luke Duke. And we played superheroes and I was Spider-Man.

I don’t know how many hours of my childhood were influenced by Lee. I don’t know how to measure how much his work sparked my imagination. Multiply that by millions and millions and we can get some sense of what he gave us.

Because of that, his legend will live forever.

Only one word can describe Stan Lee. Excelsior!