Most people have had a hero or two throughout their lives. When you’re young they’re more magical and superhuman. As you age, they become a bit more understated.

I bet you’ve had your share of heroes. Even if you live in Philadelphia. That whole “hoagie” thing only refers to scrumptious sandwiches on submarine-shaped rolls.

My heroes? I’m a scrawny little dog. My heroes are pretty typical, and you can probably guess who they are.

• Rin Tin Tin. If it wasn’t for him that kid Timmy would never would have made it past adolescence. Every time you turned around, he was falling into a well or getting lost in a corn field on the one night in October that the overnight lows were going to hit the single digits.
• Lassie. What a dog! I could never figure out how she kept her fur looking so good through all of her adventures.
• Finally, one most people don’t know: Lad, a Dog. I don’t think Lad ever made it to the silver screen, but a guy named Albert Payson Terhune sure wrote a lot of books about Lad’s amazing doggie exploits. And here’s some bonus hero trivia. Terhune is buried at a cemetery in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. My dad worked summers in that cemetery when he was a kid, and later took my mom there when they were dating, to, you know, sort of impress her. It worked.

Pretty basic and pretty safe, and not a cat on the list. But the super heroes my mom was crazy about as a kid?

Let’s just say I’m amazed SHE survived past adolescence.

Let me explain.

The old oral tradition in my family has some rather interesting tales. In one of them my mom tucked a towel into the back of her collar and tried to leap out their third-story living room window. My grandma happened to walk into the room right as my mom turned to her and said, “Watch me! I’m going to fly like Superman!”

Eventually my mom realized the whole Superman thing could potentially be deadly for her, so she switched her allegiance to Underdog. Which was marginally better. A few belly flops off the sofa and onto the living room floor (and coffee table) left her questioning her hero worship.

Maybe it wasn’t her fault. A few years later, different town, different house, a neighbor knocked on the door, with my mom’s younger brother in tow. They walked into the kitchen, blood and dirt stuck on my Uncle Rob’s face.

“Sorry, I couldn’t stop him fast enough. I was trimming the hedges and heard him yell, ‘Mr. Hausman, watch me! I’m going to fly like Superman.’ Before I could react, he dove face first off the rock wall.”

I suspect this whole Superman thing might be a genetic problem. The only sibling in my mom’s family who didn’t identify as a dude (or dog) in tights and a cape was my Aunt Karen. And she’s the only one who’s managed to have steady employment, a car that always works, and she’s always at least fifteen minutes early for appointments.

Coincidence? I think not.

My mom eventually toned down her hero worship and began to fan-girl Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy. Which worked out well, until the neighbors said they would call the police on her if she kept looking through their windows, checking their mailboxes for suspicious return addresses, and carrying out commando crawls through their yards in the middle of the day.

Not very spy-like, but she wasn’t allowed to wander around the neighborhood after dark.

She stayed out of jail and relatively unscathed for several years, as she grew older and all of her super heroes became a variety of authors. Really boring authors.

(In my world a boring author is one who, if their writing was on a piece of newspaper, you wouldn’t bother to read a single word while you’re sniffing and peeing.)

So, what does this mean for you?

Everywhere you turn you’re told that you’re surrounded by so-called “Super Heroes.”

• Audubon Society members.
• Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.
• Suburban women who scored a deal on polyester aprons, emblazoned with the words “Kiss the Cook’s Thermador.”

I know what you might be thinking. “Where on earth is this coming from? Polly must have dropped her biscuit into her mom’s Creativity Juice.”

Hardly. She drinks the cheap stuff. When I dunk, it’s into a barrel-aged, bourbon-infused delicacy.

Check back tomorrow for my next post, where I’ll explain it all. In detail.

Or maybe the day after. I do nap around twenty-one hours a day. And it’s time for another biscuit.